Opening Date Announced for Long-Awaited SF Whole Foods Despite Years of Opposition

Three years since the contentious Whole Foods Market planned for San Francisco’s Anza Vista neighborhood was delayed by neighborhood opposition, it may finally have a ballpark opening date.

Kenneth Bernstein, the president and CEO of Acadia Realty Trust, said in a quarterly earnings call that he expects the store to open in 2025, reported the San Francisco Chronicle (the Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms). The proposed Whole Foods would be located in the City Center shopping plaza at Geary Boulevard and Masonic Avenue.

The yearslong delay in opening the Whole Foods first began in 2020, when the Board of Supervisors approved a request for an environmental review filed by San Francisco residents and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 5, all of whom opposed the store.

Unions protested the opening because Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, which has a history of anti-union actions. The space has been vacant since September 2017, before which it was home to a Best Buy.

In June, the Chronicle reported that the Board of Supervisors’ inquiries into the store’s potential environmental impacts “found air quality impacts to be less than significant.” The store still needs approval from SF’s Planning Commission, but is now on track to do so by fall at the earliest.