Where are the flowers? If SF vendors have their way, not...

Sometime this spring, San Francisco officials will decide if the long-planned Flower Mart redevelopment — a project with 2.1 million square feet of tech office space on top of the city’s historic wholesale flower market — will be built. The hitch is, it’s becoming increasingly likely the development won’t actually include a flower market.

Four years after reaching a redevelopment deal with property owner Kilroy Realty Corp., the 53 vendors who make up the San Francisco Flower Market Tenants Association increasingly believe the huge tech office campus planned for Sixth and Brannan streets South of Market won’t be compatible with their needs, their attorney says.

The city’s vision of central South of Market as a pedestrian- and bike-friendly neighborhood is at odds with the realities of a flower depot dependent on box trucks and semitrailer rigs to deliver roses and peonies imported from all over the world, said Geoff Spellberg, attorney for the Flower Market Tenants Association.

Plans to narrow Fifth and Brannan streets from four lanes to two would lead to gridlock, Spellberg said. Thousands of new tech workers streaming down the sidewalks will make it hard for trucks to get into loading docks and the parking garage.

“There is a major concern that to come back to Fifth and Brannan is going to be extremely difficult because the character of the neighborhood is going to change so dramatically with all the development,” Spellberg said. “It’s going to be another downtown business area and less of a blue-collar business area.”

For now, the project that the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors will vote on theoretically includes a 115,000-square-foot, ground-floor flower market.

But at the vendors’ urging, the proposal will also include an alternative plan to build a new wholesale flower facility somewhere else in San Francisco. Possible locations include 2000 Marin St., which had already been identified as a temporary site for the Flower Mart while the Sixth and Brannan property was being redeveloped, and the city-owned produce market on Jerrold Avenue in the Bayview neighborhood.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who has advocated for the flower vendors for more than a decade — both as a private citizen and a member of the Board of Supervisors — said the most important goal is locating the flower businesses in a place that best serves their needs.

“I think the city of San Francisco — its residents, florists and elected officials — are of one mind, which is that the flower market is one of the last blue-collar institutions in this town, and we are not going to do anything that jeopardizes it,” Peskin said.

The flower vendors’ change of heart could have major implications not just for the billion-dollar development but for the future of the central South of Market neighborhood, which was rezoned this year to allow enough development to add about 9,000 housing units and 30,000 workers.

Kilroy’s project is the largest development in the area — 2.1 million square feet of office space and 100,000 square feet of retail. If flower vendors choose not to return, the developer would have to figure out what to do with the 115,000 square feet they were to have occupied. Some of the additional space would probably be dedicated to a child care center.

Kilroy Vice President Mike Grisso said his company would prefer to build a new market for the vendors at the original site. The developer has tried to address the vendors’ concerns, and recent design changes include expanding parking and loading zones, and adding a freight elevator, “all at the vendors’ request,” he said.

“We want them to come back,” Grisso said. Leaving “is their preference, not ours. We have agreed to work with them in good faith, as we have been doing for four years. We want them to do what they think is right to ensure that the flower industry continues to thrive in San Francisco.”

He said the flower association is going to “control their own destiny” — within reason.

“We are negotiating a subsidy for them for a new Flower Mart, but it’s not an unlimited number,” Grisso said. “These are all expensive solutions. Building on-site is expensive, and building it off-site is expensive.”

Jeanne Boes, general manager of the Flower Mart, said it’s been clear that Kilroy wants the flower vendors to return to Sixth and Brannan, “but everyone is in agreement that we would probably be better served by moving to a more industrial neighborhood.”

“Getting product in here is challenging now, and in the future it’s looking like it is going to be next to impossible,” Boes said. “It would be great if we could move product on public transit, but we can’t.”

Over the past few decades, the flower market has morphed from a place where local Northern California growers sold their flowers to an exchange where flowers from around the world come in and then are off-loaded wholesale to 4,000 badge holders, who range from brick-and-mortar florists to wedding and events planners.

Of the 53 wholesale vendors, only five are local growers. Vast quantities of flowers come from afar — Ecuador, Colombia, the Netherlands, Japan and Chile. While flower markets conjure visions of vivid blooms and sweet aromas, the reality is the business is dirty and noisy.

“What people don’t see are the pallets and forklifts, the dirty water and the waste,” Boes said. “They don’t see the underbelly, that we are kind of smelly. We produce a lot of garbage.”

Laurel Winzler, who owns Laurel Designs in the Richmond District, said many Flower Mart customers are skeptical about the wisdom of returning to central SoMa. While the market’s customers don’t have any formal role in the negotiations, Winzler has put together an ad hoc committee of florists to try to help influence the association’s final decision.

“The florists never thought that coming back was a good idea,” she said. “The neighborhood is changing so drastically around the project, and we are not a compatible use for what they are envisioning.”

Louie Figone, 76, grows ranunculus, dahlias, sunflowers, seeded eucalyptus, anemones and hydrangea on 18 acres in Half Moon Bay. This time of year, he goes to the market three times a week at 1:30 in the morning — he likes to be back at his ranch by 7:30. Figone remembers when the market opened in 1956 and recalls going to the old market at Fifth and Howard streets with his father as a boy.

He said that he hasn’t given up hope that the issues can be worked out at the Kilroy site, but the city “hasn’t proven that the turning radius will allow us to get in and out of there.”

Wherever it ends up, he hopes he will be around long enough to see the new spot open.

“The Flower Mart is a historic institution, and the flower business is big business these days,” he said. “The flower business is what I know. It’s where I grew up. It’s in my blood.”

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen