By Rose Garrett - Published on July 17, 2014.
Though protesters feared yesterday would be the day that the Sheriff's Department enacted the official eviction of the recycling center in Safeway's parking lot, it turns out that the axe fell this morning at around 7am.
Supervisor Scott Weiner, who's been a proponent of closing the center, tweeted the news earlier this morning.
At 6 am, recycling center @ Market Street Safeway was closed down by Sheriff, enforcing court order. The center will no longer be operating.
— Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) July 17, 2014
We spoke to Kathy Gorwood, a spokeswoman for Sheriff Mirkarimi's office, who confirmed to us that the eviction had indeed taken place, noting that deputies arrived at the property a little before 7am and completed the eviction at 7:15am. Though she couldn't give specific details, Gorwood said that a typical process would be to search and secure the property, and might include cutting or changing locks in the transfer of the property to its lawful owner.
The San Francisco Community Recyclers facility has proved a contentious issue among local residents, some of whom calling it an unsightly and unnecessary vestige of the days before curbside recycling, while others decrying the loss of the center as a symptom of an increasingly sanitized neighborhood that's become unfriendly to low- and no-income San Franciscans.
Despite the controversy, the eviction has been a long time coming, with the order originally naming September 6th, 2013 as the eviction date. Shortly thereafter, Safeway and the recycling center reached a settlement which extended the eviction date to June 30th, 2014, bringing us up to today's inexorable conclusion.
