West Portal Avenue's Comeback Was Built by Its Neighbors. The Empire Block Is Next.

Where the trains come out of the tunnel at West Portal Station, the avenue now has a red transit lane, painted crosswalks, murals on the station walls and a bikeshare dock, with planters steering people on foot toward the platforms. A few doors up, the Empire Theater has been dark since early in the pandemic, and its marquee faces BookShop West Portal across the street.

Over the past six years, almost everything that changed on this avenue came from people who already had a stake in it. The station redesign happened after months of neighborhood feedback, and the new restaurants were opened by people who live within walking distance. The proposed building at 85 West Portal Avenue is the first large change in that period to arrive through a process in which the neighborhood has no formal voice.

A Restaurant Run With Local Addresses

In June, Sara Deseran made the case in The San Francisco Standard that West Portal had become "a place people go to on purpose to eat, even people who don't live there," and she traced the run to the opening of Little Original Joe's in 2020. Here is the sequence she laid out:

The Duggans grew up in West Portal. Degan and Conti live there, and the Standard reports that this is why they put Binu Bonu on the avenue. Cynthia Huie, a longtime West Portal resident who owns On Waverly in Chinatown, put it plainly while eating at Tur: "nearly all of the successful new operators actually live here."

Elena Duggan described what that means in practice: "As people who grew up in West Portal ourselves, we have to represent. We do our dry cleaning here. We have to look our neighbors in the eye." The same Standard column points out that Noe Valley, which has comparable wealth, added only three notable restaurants over the same stretch, and none were owned by Noe Valley residents.

The new places opened next to the older ones. The column describes a tutu school, banks that still have human tellers, a salon called Grateful Head and a postal shop that also sharpens knives, all still in business on the same Friday afternoon that Elena's and Tur were full.

The Station Redesign Did Not Cost the Shops Visits

The station-area changes went through a similar process with neighbors. SFMTA began the West Portal Station Safety and Community Space Improvements project in spring 2024, reworked it after community feedback, and won board approval within three months. Most of the traffic changes were in place three months after that, and the murals, decorative crosswalks and bikeshare station followed in 2025. The project page now lists every element as built and the evaluation as complete.

The merchants' main concern at the start was that harder driving access would mean fewer customers. The city's June 2026 evaluation report, summarized in an SFMTA post on July 20, 2026, reported these results:

• Injury crashes in the project area fell from an average of 6.7 per year before the changes to 2.7 per year after.
• As of fall 2025, the project area had no crashes between a Muni vehicle and another vehicle.
• On Wawona between Taraval and Ulloa, 7% of drivers were speeding after speed cushions went in, down from 19% before.
• Illegal U-turns at the station dropped 75% after the red transit lane was added.
• Of passersby surveyed, 82% said they visit West Portal businesses as often as before, 13% more often and 5% less often. Respondents who drive gave close to the same answers.

The city also reports that West Portal's sales tax receipts grew faster than the citywide average both before and after the project. So the restaurant boom and the street redesign happened together, and the evaluation found that the redesign did not reduce visits to the shops. The horseshoe materials in place now are designed to last three to five years, and SFMTA says it is seeking grant funding to replace them with more permanent ones.

The Empire Block Is Following a Different Process

The Empire Theater, which last operated as CinéArts at the Empire, is at 85 West Portal Avenue. According to The San Francisco Standard, neighbors circulated a petition earlier this year against a version of the proposal with 64 units over nine stories. At the end of August, the San Francisco Chronicle reported a much larger plan: 172 units on 12 stories, including 26 affordable units, plus 7,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and 89 parking spaces. The site would also take in the adjacent Goodwill and Supercuts building, which would be demolished. The Chronicle also reported that Goodwill had already said it would close its shop there.

The filing is still unsettled. In the same Chronicle report, the development team said it had submitted the revised application, while the Planning Department's chief of staff said he had not seen it and that only the January application was on file. SF YIMBY reported on September 1 that the revised plan relies on the city's Family Zoning plan, AB 1287 and SB 423, and that construction costs and a timeline had not been shared.

The Standard explained that streamlining laws like these let a project that meets certain density and affordability criteria skip the long public hearings that once shaped projects on streets like this one. Supervisor Myrna Melgar told the paper she could not require the developers to hold listening sessions:

"People have feelings about the way it used to be, where communities could ask for concessions and things. But that is just no longer the reality that we live in."

Melgar told the Chronicle, "We are getting 26 units of affordable housing on West Portal." Mark MacDonald, co-founder of DM Development, told the Chronicle the project would bring "a very high level of quality and finishes." Jesse Appleton, who owns the Empire building and an adjacent property, told the Standard that the team understands the construction challenges, will work closely with merchants and has been "engaging with community leaders throughout."

How the Merchants on the Block See It

The merchants on this block have their own long histories on the avenue. Anna Bullard, a board member of the West Portal Merchants Association, works at BookShop West Portal, which has been across from the Empire for 20 years. She told the Standard that the main feeling among business owners is anxiety, and that the merchants "have not been part of the process at all."

Esperanza Mahan has owned El Toreador since 1980, and the space has been a Mexican restaurant since 1957. She told the Standard she dreads the roughly two years of construction that merchants expect, though no schedule has been confirmed. Giuseppe Vivacqua, who has owned Spiazzo Ristorante for 30 years, expects the opposite. "The construction will be a pain, but customers will come anyway," he said. "And then the new housing will bring many more people."

Pedro Galletti, owner of Mozzarella di Bufala, will be closer to the work than anyone. His building sits between the Empire and the Goodwill and Supercuts building, he chose not to sell, and the new building would rise on both sides of him. He described his view to the Standard this way.

"As a business person, it's a great opportunity to get more people and customers into the neighborhood. As a resident of the area for 30 years, I hate the idea of a big tower."

Almost everyone in this section, like the Duggans and the Binu Bonu owners, is both a merchant and a neighbor. That is the arrangement that produced the Standard's dining story, and it is why reactions on the block are split.

The Relief Fund and the Calendar

In the Standard's reporting, Galletti and Issas Haddad of West Portal Daily Market both suggested that the developer could help merchants through the construction period. The paper reported that DM Development had not set up a grant fund. Melgar pointed to legislation she sponsored, approved last year by Mayor Daniel Lurie, that supports businesses affected by construction under the city's rezoning program. She told the Standard that the fund holds millions of dollars that affected merchants can apply for once work begins.

Meanwhile, the merchants association that Bullard helps run kept its fall schedule. The West Portal Merchants Association held its Wine Walk on September 17 and listed a West Portal Elementary centennial celebration along the avenue on October 3. It also listed a Fleet Week promotion with live music at Siren, and a Halloween Stroll on October 31 with a costume contest at BookShop West Portal, 80 West Portal Avenue. The association scheduled that contest directly across from the theater that may be demolished.

For now, the Empire is still closed, the revised application's status at Planning is disputed, and no construction start date has been announced. The businesses around it, including El Toreador, Spiazzo, Mozzarella di Bufala and the bookstore, are the same ones that have anchored this block for decades.

Brandi trained as an architect, and she follows a project like the Empire block for what it will mean at street level: how a 12-story building meets a row of storefronts, and how the avenue functions while it goes up. If you live near West Portal and want to talk through what the proposal could mean for your part of the neighborhood, Brandi Mayo is glad to walk the block with you. Work With Brandi.