San Francisco Flower Market to Open After Several Delays

While an official opening date hasn’t yet been announced, the San Francisco Flower Market is inviting vendors to relocate to its new 901 16th Street location this month. According to Jeanne Boes, Flower Market General Manager and Chief Operating Officer, the intention is to move everyone in between Christmas and New Year’s Day, with operations up and running before Valentine’s Day, and then have a “grand reopening.”

The existing market, which includes two warehouses and a parking lot, spans roughly 1.5 million square feet. It’s been located South-of-Market since 1956. The relocated Flower Market will house between 250 to 350 employees, operating within a 117,000 square feet footprint. 

“And that does not include the parking garage, which is also new,” said Mike Grisso, senior vice president at Kilroy Realty Corporation, which is building the facility. 

The parking garage has 205 parking spaces. Preliminary forecasts indicate the Market will attract about 400 unique visitors and shoppers daily. 

Flower Market vendors had expressed concerns that the shift to Potrero Hill might not meet their needs, preferring a location rooted in a blue-collar business tradition. An underutilized site previously occupied by Corovan was ultimately selected, with efforts to preserve existing structures.

“It goes back to 2014 when Kilroy Realty Corporation purchased the existing Flower Market from the ownership groups,” Grisso said. “At that time, we had a proposal—a plan—to build a new San Francisco Flower Market at the existing location with a development above it. It was going to be on the ground floor, at the lower level. But after that, the Flower Market told us that they would prefer a different location. We finally landed on this site. It was available, it was the right size, and the Flower Market liked the location.” 

The Flower Market first emerged in 1912, when farmers gathered to sell their products at Lotta’s Fountain at Market and Kearny streets. The market was formed to provide Bay Area floret brokers with a place to buy and sell. Over time flower producing families have left the business or retired. The San Francisco market is the second largest in the country, after Los Angeles, and is one of the few remaining wholesale-owned flower souqs nationwide. 

“We like to say we have the biggest selection, because we have not only global products but also what’s indigenous to California,” Boes said. “Most florists in the United States don’t have that opportunity to have such a huge selection. Most of the families who were the original shareholders of the flower market are no longer in the flower industry. Now we have five growers, and we have wholesalers. We wholesale product from all over the world and internationally. There’s not a huge demand for flower markets, that’s why no one is building them in the U.S. or around the world. Because of the internet and the availability of flowers and shipping and all that, our market was really antiquated. And we are really looking to support our vendors.”

The SF Flower Market operates as a nonprofit, with a mission to support floral agriculture in Northern California. The market has rebranded, adopting a new logo meant to resemble a dahlia, San Francisco’s official flower.

“The flower industry employs a lot of Californians from the farms to the logistics companies, to wholesaling entities… to the people who actually use the product, in the art of designing flowers,” Boes said. “The flower industry sells millions of dollars of flowers.” 

U.S. floriculture generates more than $6 billion revenue annually, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. 

The Potrero Hill location features air conditioning, a loading dock, mezzanine level, and two freight elevators. The SoMa facility never had a loading dock.

“Most of the cut flower vendors have their own refrigerator space where they store their flowers, usually overnight and sometimes during the daytime, too, to keep them fresh and make them last longer. Having new, state-of-the-art modern refrigeration is a big upgrade,” Grisso said.