By Lisa Awbrey, HANC Vice-President

For over four decades (since 1981) the momentous Heart-of-the-City Farmers Market has served an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 San Franciscans and visitors per week, alleviating the food desert that otherwise would exist in the surrounding Civic Center, South of Market and Tenderloin neighborhoods. Equally noteworthy: United Nations Plaza at Civic Center is an internationally historic site commemorating the signing of the United Nations Charter on June 26, 1945. Now those are some hallowed bricks!

Local writer, activist and social cartographer Rebecca Solnit calls UN Plaza “the spiritual and geographical heart of a considerable territory” because it is “a place where you know where you stand in the world, in the most practical and metaphysical senses.”

Recently on September 21, 2023 at the Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee hearing, Supervisor Dean Preston urged Rec & Park to publicly share information regarding the decision to displace the Heart of the City Farmers Market from its UNPlaza home and commence construction of a skate park and recreation area in its “pilot activation plan” for the site. 

In the months leading up to the move, Rec Park failed to hold even a single community meeting and failed  to collaboratively engage with key stakeholders, including the over 50 farms and vendors, neighborhood small business owners, Tenderloin community leaders and residents and impacted labor unions.

Rec Park’s decision was forced on the farmers market and happened without community meetings, and with no clear commitments to the farmers market or the community on the length of the pilot or the measures the city would take to mitigate the impact on the farmers market, and even more concerning without any metrics for determining at some future point, whether the pilot was a success. 

Rec Park originally represented their plan as a “temporary and easily reversable six-month pilot” but without public notice or engagement, abruptly extended the pilot to two years. 

Rec Park rebuffed repeated requests to send a representative to speak at the public hearing and did not provide an authorized speaker.

During public comment, all but one person supported the resolution. The GAO committee voted unanimously to support and sent it to the full Board of Supervisors with a positive recommendation. Preston ended by saying that this is the only first step in demanding that Rec Park act in good faith and with transparency, with accountability, and that it provide written plans, commitments and metrics to measure the success or failure of the activation pilot. 

For more information and to sign a petition in support of the resolution to protect the Heart of the City Farmers Market go here:

https://www.change.org/p/conserve-united-nations-plaza-the-farmers-market-no-backroom-deals-for-ferris-wheels?source_location=search