Repairs to bring the building at 20th and Mission streets into code compliance will mean merchants of handmade goods are moving out of the cooperative known as 20 Mission, while longtime neighborhood bar Doc’s Clock completes plans to move by 2017 into an adjoining space next door that is currently empty.
The bar recently became part of the city’s Legacy Business Registry, which both acknowledges businesses’ historic value and makes them eligible for city grants that can help offset the cost of rent increases and other rising costs of doing business. Plans are being drawn up for the bar to move from its space at 2575 Mission St., where its lease ends in July 2017, to 2417 Mission Street near 20th Street.
“We are moving Doc’s Clock and are going to do our best to keep it the same. We will have the same staff, the same shuffleboard, the same bar stools and the same bar,” wrote owner Carey Suckow in an email.
Little else will change, with the exception of larger bathrooms, Suckow said. She hopes to move the bar by the end of their current lease, pending Planning Department approval, and the landlord is willing to host the bar’s iconic sign as well, though it’s not yet exactly clear if and how that will be arranged.
Doc’s Clock future home is a narrow sliver in a different part of a building that until recently also housed a collective of crafters known as 20 Mission Hive.
The creators of goods and clothing at the Hive at 2415 Mission Street are looking for places to relocate to quickly. The maker space will be forced to mostly close by next week, business owners there said, due to construction that needs to be done to bring the building up to code.
Kayo Mitsuyama, who designs and hand-makes clothing for her business Kayo Anime Clothing, said the rushed move meant trouble for her since she did not have a new location and the transition interrupted her busiest sales season.
“I’m under lots and lots of stress and I don’t even know where I’m going next week,” she said. “It’s scary. What’s going to happen? It’s like six times as much [rent] anywhere else.”
Onder Keskin, who hand-makes leather bags, belts, and other accessories in his business Skin on Skins at the Hive, said he will leave at the end of the year when his lease ends but hopes to stay in place during repairs as the space around him empties. Most construction, he said, will need to take place toward the rear of the building, not where he is. Still, space is difficult to find.
Keskin, who is a member of SFMade, said he is applying for several places and hoping to make his business work elsewhere.
The building owner did not immediately return requests for comments on the details of the renovations.
