More on the Lower Fillmore and Yoshi's
From today’s Examiner,
On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved the creation of a community benefit district along Fillmore and its adjoining blocks, which will raise more than $300,000 a year from property owners that can be spent on marketing, street improvements and cleaning and security. New businesses have opened, from a music café offering dim sum to the vibrantly-colored Sheba Piano Lounge run by sisters Netsanet and Israel Alemayehu. And the building under construction at Eddy and Fillmore will hold 80 condominiums, a parking garage, a 6,000 square foot nonprofit Jazz Heritage Center, a 6,000 square foot Blue Mirror restaurant in addition to the 28,000-square-foot Yoshi’s.“I think it does have a lot of potential,” said Laurie Armstrong, San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau spokeswoman. “In any district, the thing that you need to be attractive to visitors … there needs to be something for them to do and a place for them to land.”
But while the Blue Mirror gives a nod to Leola King’s famous jazz-era restaurant of the same name, the changes won’t recreate the past. Fillmore Street was the heart of an extremely vibrant African American community famous for its jazz and street life in the 1940s and 1950s, before it was essentially gutted by The City’s Redevelopment Agency in a push for urban renewal. The eminent domain spree left blocks vacant for years, evicted thousands from their homes and businesses and shut down the jazz scene, which had hosted stars such as Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Billie Holliday and Charles Mingus. [more...]
Changes could bring tourists to Fillmore [Examiner]
Condo tower may jazz up Fillmore w/ new home of Yoshi’s [SFHomeBlog]
Neighborhood dream fulfilled — Fillmore again a place of note [SFHomeBlog]
Lower Fillmore could become city community benefit district [SFHomeBlog]
Yoshi’s at Jack London Square [official site]
