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Mid-Market: The shape it’s in. Who owns it. What’s next.

We call it the plywood parade — the relentless march up Market Street from Fifth to Eighth of boarded-up or erratically open storefronts, emptying offices in the upper stories and crumbling facades. Some 31 percent of the storefronts on this stretch of Market Street are vacant. Both local government and businesses are trying to restore this faded area of Market Street into a vibrant commercial center. The three mid-Market blocks mostly look like hell.

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Special sign district on SF’s Mid-Market faces ‘uphill battle’

Warfield Building owner David Addington said he spent several years, working to bring general advertising back on Market Street from Fifth to Seventh streets, in hopes of returning the central city stretch to its former glory days as a theater district.

Although his enthusiasm for the special district hasn’t dimmed, a sense of reality has crept in as opposition to the initiative, Proposition D, mounts.