Mission Action to occupy former Thrift Town, signaling Mission District shift

The old Thrift Town corner at Mission and 17th was never just another empty storefront. Its next tenant, Mission Action, will turn the long-vacant site at 2101 Mission Street into a visible test of whether the Mission District is reclaiming space for neighbors, not just cycling through new commercial uses.

Mission Action said it was founded in 1982, when it operated as Dolores Street Community Services in response to Central American refugees arriving in San Francisco and a worsening housing crisis. More than 40 years later, the nonprofit has grown beyond its earlier footprint. It now serves low-income and immigrant communities with housing and shelter, community engagement and organizing, and direct services, and says that growth over the last 10 years pushed it out of Dolores Street and deeper into the Mission.

That shift matters because the organization’s existing access point is at 2645 Mission Street, farther from the historic center of the corridor. Moving into 2101 Mission places Mission Action at a highly visible corner where foot traffic, daily visibility and neighborhood identity intersect. The lease is a 10-year agreement.

The refurbished space is expected to be about 10,000 square feet across two stories, with offices, a community conference room, a loading dock, an atrium overlooking open-plan office space and a ground-floor commercial kitchen. The larger building is the historic Redlick Building, a four-story property with about 131,885 square feet and dock-high loading, drive-in access and a prominent corner at Mission and 17th streets. Fennie+Mehl’s project description says the building was originally three separate structures built between 1907 and the 1920s before being merged into one.

The corner’s symbolism reaches back long before Thrift Town. Redlick-Newman Furniture occupied the site from 1913 to 1975, and the famous “17 Reasons Why!” sign was installed in 1935. The Redlick family closed the store in 1975 after shopping malls and BART construction on Mission Street weakened business, turning the corner into one of the district’s most recognizable markers of retail change.

That history is what gives this move more weight than a routine lease signing. A vacant commercial shell becoming a service hub is a small but meaningful counterpoint to the Mission’s long story of turnover, displacement and reinvention. If Mission Action succeeds in bringing more people through the doors at 2101 Mission, it will do more than fill space. It will anchor a landmark corner in the work of the neighborhood itself.