Valencia Street Got Its Landlord Back. 24th Street Needed a City Grant.

Cinderella Bakery opened its doors at 2937 24th Street on August 28, and the line ran most of the block before noon. A few blocks north on Valencia, Beretta went through a quiet six-week refresh of its own last year, no line, no ribbon cutting, just the usual crowd walking back in for thin-crust pizza under new mod-era chandeliers. Both storefronts changed. Neither changed for the same reason.

The Inner Mission isn't filling back in as one story. It's filling in as three separate ones, running on three different clocks, and the clock tells you almost everything about how durable each new sign out front is likely to be.

Eight Years for One Corner

The building at 2937 24th Street, at Alabama, sat empty for the better part of a decade. La Victoria Panadería had run there for 67 years before family disputes and declining sales closed it in October 2018. Cinderella's owner, Mike Fishman, bought the building about a month later for roughly $3 million, hoping to open a second location for the Russian bakery he and his wife Marika have run on Balboa Street since 2008, in a spot that's been serving piroshki and honey cake since 1953.

Several things stretched the timeline. Neighborhood groups, including Calle 24, wanted the space to remain available to La Victoria and raised concerns about what the storefront would become, and the pandemic and rising construction costs added their own delays. Cinderella finally opened about eight years after Fishman closed on the property, into a space three times the size of the Balboa Street original, with enough production room to eventually handle the bakery's full wholesale output. A former La Victoria employee, Laura Hernandez, had already reopened her own version nearby at 3249 24th Street back in 2019, so the corner isn't a case of one tradition replacing another. It's two bakeries now, three blocks apart, on a street that spent most of a decade with a boarded storefront in between them.

The City Paid to Fill Mission Street

A different mechanism is at work six blocks over. Bissap Baobab, the Senegalese restaurant and club that had anchored 2243 Mission Street for years, closed for good in December 2025. Within about two months, the owners of Bar Part Time had a deal to take over the space, and by this summer the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development had approved a $100,000 Storefront Opportunity Grant to help them convert it into Downtime, a 6,000-square-foot nightclub and restaurant with cocktails from Dalva partner Eric Ochoa and a kitchen run by the team behind Berkeley's Rose Pizzeria. Bar Part Time's own home base is roughly 1,500 square feet, so Downtime represents a real bet on a much bigger footprint, backed by a real city check.

Across the street at 2240 Mission, the same city program put another $100,000 behind Fried Chicken Palace, a Southern-style restaurant from Michelin-starred chef Seth Stowaway that opened in November in the former WesBurger space. Stowaway has said daytime foot traffic on that stretch has been slow, and the grant is meant to help a cocktail program pull in an evening crowd that hasn't fully arrived yet. A third grant, $50,000, went to Mission Lotería, a community game that sends customers hopping between participating local businesses.

None of this is Bar Part Time or Fried Chicken Palace failing to attract business on their own. It's the city acknowledging that this particular stretch of Mission Street needed a push that Valencia's storefronts, a few blocks away, haven't needed. Bar Part Time co-owner Jeremy Castillo, who grew up around the corner from the old Bissap Baobab space, put it simply when he talked to a reporter about the project: "I'm most excited about giving back to the neighborhood that has given so much to me."

Valencia's Homecomings

Valencia Street's changes this year look different because the people behind them mostly never left. Charles Phan opened the original Slanted Door at 584 Valencia Street in 1995, moved it to the Ferry Building in 2004, and shut that location for good when the pandemic hit in March 2020. He still owns the Valencia building. The plan now is to gut it down to the studs and reopen there in early 2027, under executive chef Dong Choi, closer to the shaking beef and spring rolls that built the original following than to the national-profile restaurant it became at the Ferry Building. No grant funded that decision. Phan is returning to a building that was his the whole time.

Beretta's refresh follows the same logic on a smaller scale. Seventeen years after opening at Valencia and 23rd, owner Adriano Paganini and chef Fredy Lopez didn't relocate or sell. They closed for six weeks, brought in designer Nathan Reed for a retro-futuristic redo, and reopened with the same kitchen team and a menu that leans on the dishes that built the restaurant's reputation in the first place.

Not every Valencia storefront is a comeback story. Ian James, the leather goods shop that had been at 303 Valencia near 14th Street for four years, closed on August 15 after its owner cited a year and a half of slow sales that a day job could no longer offset. Kiku Sushi & Vegetarian opened its third location, after Berkeley and Lafayette, at 530 Valencia near 16th Street this spring, and Lili Cafe was aiming for a mid-June opening at 1199 South Van Ness at 23rd Street, in a space that had sat empty for almost two years after Little Spot Cafe closed.

Here's a quick map of what's actually where, for anyone trying to keep the addresses straight:

• 2937 24th Street (Alabama): Cinderella Bakery, opened August 28
• 2243 Mission Street (near 19th): Downtime, targeting a late fall opening
• 2240 Mission Street (near 19th): Fried Chicken Palace, open since November
• 584 Valencia Street: Slanted Door, targeting early 2027
• 530 Valencia Street (near 16th): Kiku Sushi & Vegetarian, open since spring
• 1199 South Van Ness Ave (at 23rd): Lili Cafe, targeting mid-2026 opening
• 303 Valencia Street (near 14th): Ian James leather goods, closed August 15

What Changed and What It Tells You

None of this is one neighborhood trend dressed up as several stories. A city grant filled a nightclub space that closed on its own timeline. A bakery that bought its building in 2018 spent years working through community concerns, a pandemic and rising construction costs before opening. A restaurant owner who never sold his building is finally ready to renovate it. Each storefront on this list cleared a different obstacle, and each obstacle tells you something different about how solid the business behind it is likely to be.

If you're walking past Downtime's construction fencing this winter, the $100,000 behind it is public record, not a guess about demand. If you're in line at Cinderella, the building has been owned since 2018, and the years since went to community discussion, the pandemic and construction costs. And if Slanted Door's door is actually slanted again by early 2027, that's a landlord opening his own building, which is about as durable a bet as this stretch of Valencia gets.

For anyone tracking the Inner Mission as more than a place to grab dinner, including owners of the multi-family buildings that sit above half these storefronts, the neighborhood's investment fundamentals are worth a separate look. But block by block, this fall's answer to "what's new" depends entirely on which one of these three clocks was running.

If you're watching how a specific block in the Inner Mission is changing and want to talk through what it means for a property you own or one you're considering, Michelle Pender is a call away.