Another piece to a 'Gourmet Ghetto'

The Ferry Building in San Francisco is often pointed to as a successful incarnation of the concept though it is struggling with its own identity as a tourist location, a place for sandwiches, coffee and dessert or a place where locals can grab a few items for dinner on their way from ferry to home.  

In San Mateo, downtown is fortunate enough to have two markets — Trag’s and Draeger’s — which serve a variety of shoppers with a fairly broad selection of food and other grocery items. Now, a new concept is trying to find its footing downtown — at a spot that has needed an anchor for a very very long time. The former Thrifty’s/Rite-Aid building on B Street between Third and Fourth avenues has seen plenty of temporary uses since the Rite-Aid closed down and took their soft-serve ice cream counter with them more than 10 years ago. Originally constructed as a theater, it is a challenging site both architecturally and space-wise. Its long retail space proved to be too challenging for most businesses and its upper floors need work. The concept is simple really, an artisan market with several vendors on the ground floor and much-needed Class A office space on the upper levels. As proposed, the market would have hand-made chocolate, a wine bar, organic noodles, organic burgers/barbecue, organic kimchi, fresh fruit, a tea cart and a French Bistro. Though the project was approved by the city’s zoning administrator in April, no official building permit application has been approved. But the zoning administrator approval is a big first step. There are still challenges with parking, its design and getting vendors to agree to sign up. There is also the issue if such a use would compete with Draeger’s and Trag’s or even B Street and Vine across the street or Bean Street Coffee next door. That may be a valid concern, but usually such developments — particularly ones that renovate a long-vacant building — are good for the local economy and create a synergy among merchants. People will travel the entire street picking up this and that and return to sample other locations on return visits.

Of course, the ideal location for such a use would have been the downtown train station at First Avenue which was constructed with a wide open interior space perfect for an open market. But that proved to be too close to Trag’s and the city moved on in its quest for a bookstore there. City officials nearly got Kepler’s on the hook there more than five years ago but that fell through when the Kepler’s Menlo Park location started to have financial trouble. The Melting Pot fondue restaurant currently anchors the train station spot and downtown now has a fine used bookstore on the corner of B Street and Third Avenue.

The city once had a vision years ago that B Street would be revitalized with the construction of the downtown movie theater. And while early concepts did not necessarily work out exactly according to plan, it seems as if the pieces of a gourmet ghetto may be coming together right on B Street with this proposal and other establishments like Draeger’s, Bean Street Coffee, B Street and Vine and B Street Books within a small radius. Let’s hope the financing works out, the vendors agree and the developer can meet local merchants’ and residents’ demands for the site’s renovation.

Jon Mays is the editor in chief of the Daily Journal. He can be reached at jon@smdailyjournal.com.