With the launching of the Art in Storefronts campaign, the Mayor's Office of Economic Workforce and Development has taken a creative approach to beautifying vacant storefronts. Under the pilot program that started in September, art installations are to be placed in vacant storefronts in the Bayview, Tenderloin, Mission and Central Market neighborhoods. Dogpatch and Potrero Hill could opt into the program after January 2010. But for now, vacant stores and houses in the neighborhood are following their own path. In fact, several empty buildings in the community have unique stories.
The former Hair Fair salon, at 1512 20th Street, is one of the Hill's longest standing vacancies. Its owner, Virginia Samaduross, is in her nineties, and two of her neighbors agree that she just doesn't care that her property sits empty. According to Julie Arvan, who lives on Rhode Island Street across from Samaduross, she’s pitched Samaduross many ideas about what to do with the salon.
"She's very independent," Arvan said. "But she does have a man named Russ who takes care of her." Russ preferred not to give his last name, but he did say that Samaduross used to run the salon before her mother got sick. That was three decades ago. "Her nieces live above the salon," he said. Kayren Hudiburgh, owner of Good Life Grocery, which is two doors from Hair Fair, said that she’d inquired about Hair Fair, but that Samaduross wasn’t inclined to sell. Chiotras Grocery occupies the ground floor of a building only a few doors down from the Samaduross and Arvan homesteads on Rhode Island Street.
Chiotras Grocery owner Ramzi Harb pointed out that a recently remodeled house at 830 Rhode Island St. had been vacant for a couple of years. The Edwardian style house is owned by the Chiotras family trust and had a complaint filed against it from the Department of Building Inspection in September. The complaint said that an 8-foot fence behind the house had been torn down in May and not replaced. That fence ran along Kansas Street resident Lisa Rasmussen's property line. She thought the house had been empty for two or three years also. "There were a lot of rats there when it was vacant," she said. The house has now been rented and a Chiotras family spokesman declined to comment for this story. 
