After 22 years of operating on Valencia Street, the nonprofit Mission Action is expanding into the former Thrift Town location at 2101 Mission St.
The group has outgrown its former office, said executive director Laura Valdez, and “really wanted our next office space to be at the heart of the Mission.”
Under Valdez’s leadership, Mission Action, which provides housing, shelter, food, legal and worker-rights services primarily to Latino and immigrant communities in San Francisco, has grown from 45 employees and a $8 million budget in late 2018, to 165 employees operating under a $25 million budget today.
The refurbished two-story, 10,000-square-foot space will include offices, a community conference room, a loading dock and an atrium overlooking an open-plan office space. The 10-year lease agreement includes plans for a ground-floor commercial kitchen.
Proximity to local transit was a huge selling point for Valdez: “This location is close to the bus lines that our community takes. The walking footprint is much higher at this location.”
Construction is expected to finish by early June, with move-in anticipated soon after.
The site at Mission and 17th streets has a long and storied history.
Following its reconstruction after the 1906 earthquake, the three-story building was first home to Redlick’s Furniture. In 1935, owner Charles Redlick erected a steel “17 Reasons Why!” sign in a bid to attract customers. The sign was so large, it spanned more than half the height of the building itself.
Redlick’s Furniture closed in the 1970s — with Redlick blaming construction from the BART line on Mission Street and the onset of shopping malls for his loss of business — but the sign endured. Regional thrift chain Thrift Town moved into the space soon thereafter.
The sign starred in Nathaniel Dorsky’s 1987 underground film “17 Reasons,” the 2002 play “17 Reasons (Why),” as well as the season four finale of The L Word in 2007.
Around this time, the Mission-based cooking nonprofit 18 Reasons based its name on the longtime Mission emblem. And in 2021, a cycling gym that had been located in the building for five years renamed itself 17 Reasons Athletic Club.
The steel lettering was taken down in 2002 after a long battle with architectural heritage preservationists and community activists. More than a half-century of dead birds were caked into its frame. And at least part of it is in someone’s backyard.
Since Thrift Town closed in 2017, the site at 2101 Mission St. has sat empty.
In its own right, the history of Mission Action rivals the impact of its new streetcorner. What started as the Dolores Shelter Program in 1982 — in response to the overwhelming number of refugees fleeing war and famine in Central America — has since expanded to 10 sites across San Francisco.
The nonprofit orchestrates everything from a citywide rapid-response network to a LGBTQ shelter space to a deportation-defense program.
Mission Action will retain its 938 Valencia St. location and convert it into a family-resource center primarily for those with school-aged children. The site will include mental-health services, English-as-a-second-language classes, parent education and tenant counseling.
Both the landlords and tenants surrounding the former Thrift Town location have been extremely welcoming, said Valdez. “They obviously know about the work that we do and our longevity over four decades and about Mission district residents.”
A highlight of the move, said Valdez, will be to use the loading dock at the building’s rear — it’s just what Mission Action needs to run its food distribution program, a collaboration between Mission Action and Arcadio’s Produce, a wholesale produce distributor.
“Everything that goes into that box is fresh produce, local produce,” said Valdez.
Valdez is encouraging donations from the community to help build out its industrial kitchen. Currently, the nonprofit prepares over 300 daily meals from “a very small kitchen” in the women’s building.
“We are very, very scrappy,” said Valdez. “We’re taking our existing furniture into the office, we’re not even going to buy new conference tables because we don’t have the money.”
Hello, Iryna !
Wonderful writing, kiddo.
I’ve been reading articles about that building and never seen a better telling.
I shopped at Thrift Town for years and let me put in a plug for Community Thrift across from the Mission cop shop on Dolores at Clarion Alley.
Mayor Lurie could leave a real Legacy if he were to realize that Clarion Alley is one of the most famous Open Air Art Galleries in the World and neither Recology nor DPW will take responsibility for keeping it clean.
I cleaned the place daily for a year and watched the ever changing murals with artists working daily and thousands of tourists in tours or alone coming to see the place that is SF authentic with the cops (who put horse shit on Lefty political murals) across the street from Good Vibrations on one end of the Gallery at Valencia and the gangs (who tag much of the art which is quickly redone) on the Mission end flanked by a Pentecostal Church and a Shoe Store.
2 killings there over past few years and tension where cops and gang bangers work at a kind of border where cops seem to expect an attack cause they keep up a solid line of Crowd Control barriers in front of the station and one captain recently wanted to build a concrete wall there as a further barrier like they’re in the Alamo or something I said.
Clarion Alley is a real City Treasure.
Yep, should close it to traffic with those SFFD friendly round iron posts and repave it and put in some benches and a couple of trash barrels.
Where was I ?
Yeah, Community Thrift on Valencia.
They are now the best place to shop when you want to redecorate your place weird and cheap featuring a library; wonderful place.
Skippy says ‘hey’ too (I’m old guy w/dog you met on sidewalk under ML’s digs)
go Niners !!
h.
A sure way to disembowel Clarion would be to insert the mayor, money, and the boba pop-ups that follow.
Of course I remember you, H.! So nice to hear from you. Thank you for writing to me and leaving such a nice comment:)
When I met my husband, he was working at Community Theft. He was working when the earth shook on 17 Oct 1989. They used to price items so that, after tax, the total would be $6.66.
Thrift Town was probably the biggest thrift store in the Bay Area, so its old location will be a huge space for anybody to fill.
Let me begin with the quote that really stood out to me in the beginning of your article, which made me stop reading it and write this
( Just for the record I’m an old Thrift Town kid 80’s baby who grew up wearing 90% TT clothing and fighting over it till Media made that sh*t cool) “Mission Action, which provides housing, shelter, food, legal and worker-rights services primarily to Latino and immigrant communities in San Francisco” . You are absolutely 100% right on this. The only problem is that You ARE 100% RIGHT on this. This Non Profit has done an immense amount of charitable work and helped thousands of Latinos and immigrant clients, and I’m very happy for that( truly I am ) Where I am a bit bothered and not to happy with is when there is such a focus on 1 or 2 communities any outside or not the average , gets pushed away. Specifically the poor “white” or non Hispanic or African American community that has lived, worked, loss, cried, celebrated, fought, helped, died alongside our Brown and black brother and sisters. Maybe there is a disbelief that we can go to “our own kind” and get a helping hand or since we are light skinned we most certainly can go and get a job making “white money” . I say this because I’ve heard this in a few community outreach or non profit organizations. Just to be clear this is absolutely not one grass roots organization or millionaire backed hedge fund program geared or targeted for a Güero like me. Sooo when I went to get a box of food a few times from this organization and a couple others I was treated with disregard, lied to, pushed away or when finally given 1 box of food (minus the milk and snacks if course lol) I was told it wasna 1 time deal……. I understand that the elite have oppressed the world and most of them are of pale nature but they don’t represent all melanin challenged folk out here struggling along side everyone else. And they most certainly don’t represent Zachariah (me). So maybe this will get published (I doubt it ) and maybe someone will want to further the topic of what the fee of us who are not a detriment to society but work hard to survive with no one fighting for us but ourselves. We learned how to from our neighbors, thank you to all those who continue to fight for the rights of ALL of us.
I used to live at 2176 Mission St for over 12 years,I shopped at the Thrift store at least once a week. Althoug I am not Latino I felt verywelcomed and respected. Hope you will to treat me the same. I’m of African American. So will I be able to get service??
Laughed out loud at “More than a half-century of dead birds were caked into its frame”!
From Thrift to nonprofit Grift.
They’ll vote you down but you’re right.
It’s a sad state of affairs, watching the neighborhood decline from vibrant, working class, eco-friendly and affordable retail to what’s essentially a welfare office.
Hardly the highest, best use of the property