The ARTery Project is an exciting series of art events, fairs, installations and performances taking place along Market Street between UN Plaza and Sixth Street.
The San Francisco Arts Commission was awarded a $250,000 grant by the National Endowment for the Arts Mayors’ Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Initiative (MICD25) to support the revitalization of the Mid Market neighborhood. The MICD25 grant program supports creative placemaking projects that contribute toward the livability of communities by transforming blighted areas into lively and sustainable places with the arts at their core.
The MICD25 grant will help support the larger vision for the Mid Market neighborhood by utilizing art to implement an economic development strategy comprised of four components.
Photo by Ian Wang
The Central Market Partnership is a public/private initiative launched and led by the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development to renew and coordinate efforts to revitalize the Central Market neighborhood, the stretch of Market Street between Fifth Street and Van Ness Avenue. The City's goal is to restore Central Market as San Francisco's downtown arts district while inviting in new retail, restaurants, services and employers to take advantage of the transit and downtown location and serve the adjacent Tenderloin and SOMA neighborhoods. City partners include San Francisco Planning, San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, Department of Public Works, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Police Department and others.
Click here for more information
The Central Market Community Benefit District (CMCBD) partnered with the architecture community (HOK, American Institute of Architects - San Francisco, WSP Flack+Kurtz, and Public Architecture) in the fall of 2010 in a streetscape improvement exercise designed to identify potential solutions to improve Central Market that could be immediately actionable, scalable and sustainable. This exploration led to a proposal to reutilize and readapt vacant kiosks along Market Street in Central Market for micro-retail and arts/cultural uses.
The CMCBD and HOK guided and implemented this pilot program in 2011 in partnership with the City's Department of Public Works and JCDecaux, the entity that owns and operates the kiosks.
The Central Market Kiosk Reuse Program currently includes three kiosks in the Central Market area.
The kiosk at Seventh and Market Streets operates as a bicycle repair stop managed by Central Market-based Huckleberry Bicycles. Huckleberry Bicycles (www.HuckleberryBicycles.com), located at 1073 Market Street, provides free bicycle repairs and maintenance services through the community kiosk. Hours of operation: Monday-Friday, 7:30-9:30 a.m.
The kiosk at Sixth and Market Streets operates as an artist-in-residence space by San Francisco-based artists. The kiosk, named "Edicola", serves as a venue for featuring works by print media artists, including artist books, prints, and albums. Edicola also publishes a free monthly community newspaper. Edicola is dedicated to providing a platform for emerging artists to reach their community through support from the public and by repurposing a kiosk that would otherwise be vacant. Hours of operation: Tuesday-Friday, 4-7 p.m., Saturday & Sunday, 12-6 p.m.
The third kiosk is located on Fifth Street between Market and Mission Streets and will be operated by Intersection for the Arts (www.TheIntersection.org) for an arts programming use. The first program will be incorporated through the organization's summer youth arts program and is scheduled to open July 2012.
Future opportunities may develop as the pilot program progress and expands. For inquiries and further information, please contact the Central Market Community Benefit District at info@central-market.org or 415-957-5985.
The Central Market Arts committee was formed in 2010 by arts and community-based organizations dedicated to a common vision of promoting San Francisco's Central Market neighborhood as a vital arts district and creating an open forum for dialogue about arts in the community. Its mission is to serve as a unified voice for arts of every discipline through cooperative marketing efforts, government advocacy, and the production of a yearly capstone event.
Click here for more information
The City will be piloting several strategies to test ways to improve public transit reliability, to provide safe and improved experiences for pedestrians, and to create better connections between north and south districts and neighborhoods.
This traffic diversion pilot project requires eastbound traffic on Market Street to turn right at Tenth and Sixth streets in order to discourage the use of Market Street by through traffic. Transit vehicles, taxis, delivery trucks and bicycles are not required to turn right. The project does not close any portions of Market Street to general traffic, as traffic may still turn onto eastbound Market Street from all cross streets.
The Required Right Turn Pilot project began as an experiment in September 2009 to improve conditions on Market Street for Muni customers, pedestrians, bicyclists and taxis. The purpose of the pilot was to determine if the improvements could be made while avoiding the creation of new traffic problems.
The Better Market Street Project is an initiative between city agencies and community partners to improve and enhance one of the oldest streets in San Francisco. Market Street cuts across the City for three miles from the waterfront at the Ferry Building to hills of Twin Peaks at the base of Castro. This project aims to improve the overall experience for residents, merchants, shoppers, and people visiting Market Street.
The Better Market Street Project is an opportunity for the City to collect and analyze comments on how to improve and reinvigorate this public realm. This project is in the visioning process and the goal is to reshape and redesign Market Street to coincide with the planned resurfacing of this corridor in 2014.
