San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office today said he wants the site of the shuttered and fiscally troubled Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts to remain a cultural space, but offered few details about the path forward.
For 50 years, the nonprofit MCCLA at 25th and Mission streets has run arts programming from the four-story building it leased from the city for a dollar a year. The Arts Commission has also given it funding, with the expectation that it will raise more funds from donors, classes and events.
This month, however, the Mission Cultural Center ran out of money and, on Jan. 26, it closed indefinitely.
“The mayor is committed to the future of the site, and is working in close partnership with community leaders, artists and cultural stakeholders to chart a path forward that safeguard MCCLA’s cultural legacy, art, and archives,” a statement from the mayor’s office said.
The city’s commitment comes after a meeting at City Hall Wednesday where no decisions were made, according to several sources who asked that their names not be used. Instead, options were discussed, including having the mayor appoint someone other than the Arts Commission to serve as interim overseer.
Among others, the meeting included Aní Rivera from the Galería De La Raza, Robert Sanchez from the cultural center’s board, Jennifer Ferrigno from District 9 Jackie Fielder’s office, and Moisés García, community liaison from the mayor’s staff. The mayor did not attend, according to a source.
Susana Rojas, the executive director of Calle 24, said a community meeting will be held at the cultural center on Monday at 5:30 p.m. to discuss its future. Press are not invited.
“The cultural center is a community asset, and the community will decide what to do,” Rojas said.
At present, the Arts Commission oversees and funds all of the city’s cultural centers. But since early January, 2025, when the former director, Martina Ayala, laid off all but two employees and shut down classes, that relationship has frayed.
After those layoffs, the center reopened on Jan. 21. Classes, workshops and art shows resumed for the year. But after closing for winter recess on Dec. 13, it failed to reopen on Jan. 13 as planned.
Ayala stepped down on Dec. 15, and for three weeks, Derek Jentzsch, the founder of Broderick Haight Consulting, a nonprofit consulting firm, served as interim director. He quit earlier this week after it became clear he would not be paid.
In a Jan. 14 email, 12 days before shuttering the center, MCCLA board president Bob Sanchez and Derek Jentzsch, then interim executive director, asked the city to advance MCCLA $300,000 in grants so that it could remain open.
In the emails, which were first reported by El Tecolote, Sanchez and Jentzsch said that without the funds, MCCLA would be in dire straits and have to either declare bankruptcy, merge with other arts nonprofits, become fiscally sponsored or be “retooled.”
The money Sanchez and Jentzsch requested from the city was to keep MCCLA afloat until June, when the organization needs to relocate in preparation for the planned seismic retrofitting of the building.
As seismic retrofitting and building modernization goes forward, “the city will continue to explore opportunities to ensure that 2868 Mission St. site can continue to serve as a vibrant cultural space for generations to come,” the mayor’s office said.