David Lawrence loaded his Ole Hickory smokers with oak wood and set up to cook a thousand pounds of meat. This week he’ll be opening Black Bark, his new Fillmore district restaurant, with San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee there to cut the ceremonial ribbon on Tuesday, ahead of the public opening Wednesday.

As the sign outside the restaurant reads, “We’re bringing barbecue back to the Fillmore.”

But barbecue isn’t the only thing that has been missing in the Fillmore. For more than two decades, through multimillion-dollar revitalization projects, the city has attempted to restore the neighborhood as a center for African American-owned businesses. But success has been nebulous; black-owned businesses have opened only to close or to move. Lawrence, who also owns another restaurant across the street, 1300 on Fillmore, is one of the few who have stayed put.

“Fillmore has unfortunately lost a lot of African Americans,” Lawrence said. Fred Jordan, president of the San Francisco African American Chamber of Commerce, put it more strongly: “The Fillmore is a disaster. It represents to me a community that has been basically destroyed by the city’s attempts to rebuild it.”

That’s not to say that the area hasn’t flourished food-wise, in recent years. Now the neighborhood’s most striking sight may be the line snaking outside of State Bird Provisions each night, as diners try to snag a seat at one of America’s hottest restaurants. State Bird, along with its sister restaurant the Progress, plus the gastropub Fat Angel and Wise Sons’ soon-to-open bagelry, have made the Fillmore a hot spot on culinary maps. None of these businesses is owned by African Americans.

‘Harlem of the West’

Once known as the “Harlem of the West,” the Fillmore district was once the heart of San Francisco’s black community. In the years following World War II, it was a showcase for top-tier African American jazz performers like Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane. But starting in the late 1960s, sweeping and repeated city redevelopment and low-income housing projects dismantled what had been a cohesive neighborhood. The devastation was so great the area got a new nickname: Fill-no-more.

There has also been a steady erosion of the black population across the entire city. According to Bay Area census numbers, San Francisco’s African American population has dropped from 96,078 (13.4%) in 1970 to just 46,781 (5.8%) in 2010. (In 2014, the U.S. was 13.2% African American.)

Back to Gallery As Fillmore’s black core erodes, focus shift to food 16 1 of 16 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 2 of 16 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 3 of 16 Photo: David Johnson 4 of 16 Photo: Barney Peterson, The Chronicle 5 of 16 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 6 of 16 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 7 of 16 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 8 of 16 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 9 of 16 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 10 of 16 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 11 of 16 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 12 of 16 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 13 of 16 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 14 of 16 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 15 of 16 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 16 of 16 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle































In the mid-1990s, the city once again renewed its efforts to revive the neighborhood, this time by attempting to rebrand the area as the Historic Fillmore Jazz Preservation District. It was yet another revival effort that sputtered.

Then came the grandest plan: the Fillmore Heritage Center. Opened in 2007, the $75-million building was meant to turn the Fillmore into a premium attraction. It included the upscale 1300 on Fillmore, a 12-story condominium tower, and the showpiece: a 28,000-square-foot, two-story performance venue, Yoshi’s. The latter cost a reported $15 million to build. Its premiere — complete with red carpet, velvet ropes and neon lights — was attended by the likes of then-Mayor Gavin Newsom and Assemblyman Mark Leno.

Businesses closed

But the big project did not prove the savior for smaller businesses. Since the Fillmore Heritage Center opened, a number of black-owned neighborhood restaurants have closed, including Rasselas, Powell’s Place and Gussie’s Chicken and Waffles, along with non-food operations such as Marcus Books and the New Chicago Barber Shop.

Yoshi’s did not fare much better. After a $7.2 million loan from the city’s redevelopment agency failed, Yoshi’s filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012 and eventually closed in 2014. For the past year, now under city control, the sprawling restaurant and concert venue has sat vacant.

Joaquin Torres, deputy director at the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, who leads Mayor Lee’s Invest in Neighborhoods initiative, acknowledged that there have been some “very unfortunate setbacks.”

London Breed, District Five supervisor, believes the city didn’t listen to the community.

“The problem with Fillmore corridor is there was too much city involvement that made the neighborhood into something artificial without understanding the landscape,” she said.

Not surprisingly, Yoshi’s demise has had a significant impact on the neighborhood.

“People actually thought (the restaurant 1300 on Fillmore) was closed because Yoshi’s was closed,” says Lawrence, who has received financial assistance from the city to keep his restaurant open. “Business dropped off about 40 percent. The whole first seating, gone.”

Up the street, Sheba’s Piano Lounge, opened in 2006 by Netsanet Alemayehu and Agonafer Shiferaw, has had a 30 percent dip in the same period. Shiferaw was one of the pioneering entrepreneurs brought in as part of the Jazz District revitalization efforts. In 1999, he moved his popular jazz club and Ethiopian restaurant Rasselas from its original home at Divisadero and California to the Fillmore.

“I thought it was a really magnificent idea, trying to recreate a historical period that was gone a while back in very progressive ways,” said Shiferaw.

But for Shiferaw, the project’s promise didn’t live up to reality. He closed Rasselas in 2013.

No plan for Yoshi’s space

As far as what to do with the former Yoshi’s, “nobody seems to have any idea,” Shiferaw said. He submitted his own proposal to the city last year, offering to buy and take over the space. The city never responded to his offer, Shiferaw said, but he continues to reach out to different businesses that he believes would be both a good fit for the venue and be culturally relevant, such as the Los Angeles-based music club House of Blues, or Marcus Samuelsson’s popular Harlem restaurant Red Rooster.

While no decisions have been made yet, Breed hopes a plan can be reached in early 2016.

“I care about making this work. It’s really complicated and frustrating for me because this is my community,” said Breed. “The corridor has such potential to be great.”

She acknowledged that the need to fill the space may lead to a process that may not favor African American competitors. Ultimately, she said, whatever goes into the Yoshi’s space “has to be sustainable.”

That concept is not shared by everyone in the neighborhood. Shiferaw believes that, besides being sustainable, any new project should honor the original intent of promoting African American ownership, culture and identity. “You think the city and this community is going to turn this into a Whole Foods? Are you crazy?”

And the big-project policy has lost support among some community members. Michele Wilson owned Gussie’s Chicken and Waffles, which closed in 2009 following a flood and subsequent dispute with her landlord. She believes the Fillmore should place less emphasis on making the district a destination and focus more on a mix of businesses for both the community and tourists. She points out the success of neighboring Hayes Valley, where people go not just for dining but also to shop and wander.

“You come to the Fillmore and you leave,” said Wilson, who is working on reopening Gussie’s in Uptown Oakland this spring. “It’s too good of a neighborhood to be wasted like that. There’s no reason why all these other neighborhoods can do it and they can’t.”

A time of change

Lawrence agrees. “We’re in one of those changing periods at this moment. Not just Fillmore, all of San Francisco is changing. I feel we’re part of that change.”

Back at Black Bark, the sign above the door is more than just a catchphrase for Lawrence and his wife and business partner, Monetta White.

Since Leon McHenry, owner of Leon’s Bar-B-Q, passed away in the late 1990s, slow-smoked meats and other down-home eats have been in short supply here. As the district’s first black-owned barbecue restaurant in almost two decades, Black Bark represents a link to the past, but also a way forward to the future.

“We want to be something that people from this neighborhood look at and aspire to be. We’re out there to be an example — not just to African Americans, but to all Americans. That’s what I’m trying, just do the best I can,” said Lawrence.

Besides bringing brisket back to the neighborhood, the restaurant’s fast-casual model, which will be open six days a week for both lunch and dinner, is also taking a cue from the likes of State Bird down the street: go after not only a local audience, but appeal more widely to the city’s new generation of food-loving customers.

“The Fillmore has survived many things,” Lawrence said. “We’ll survive this.”

Sarah Fritsche is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: sfritsche@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @foodcentric