Upper Fillmore This Summer: What Actually Changed Between April and July

If you live between Jackson and Sutter, the last ninety days on Fillmore Street have felt busier than the two years before them combined. A theater got its approval. A festival almost died and came back. A corner that has been dark since Noosh closed finally has a construction crew inside it. None of these are coincidences. They are the visible surface of a single investor's plan finally moving from press release to permit.

This is a walking guide to what is different on your block right now, and what will be different by the time you put away the patio heaters.

The 90-day timeline, at a glance

The corner at Fillmore and Pine

The most concrete change is the one you can hear. All upstairs tenants at 2001 Fillmore got letters on April 24 that they must move by the end of May to accommodate construction of Monami, a new Korean barbecue restaurant that will replace Noosh, with ground-floor construction starting June 1. The building has held a rotation of restaurants for decades. For years the space was home to the much beloved Pacific Heights Bar & Grill, then Thai Stick, and later Noosh.

Monami is not a new operator taking a flyer on the neighborhood. Junsoo and Hyunyoung Bae, the founders of SSAL on upper Polk, are branching out to open a second restaurant there. SSAL holds a Michelin star. Chef-owner Junsoo Bae told the Chronicle he wants it to be "a Korean barbecue version of House of Prime Rib." Opening is targeted for Fall 2026.

For upstairs tenants, the cost is real. Hair stylist Petsche moved into 2001 Fillmore in 2012 after years at Pure Beauty and the Soaps salon at Fillmore and Sacramento, and has spent close to 25 years on Fillmore. Other displaced tenants include an aesthetician, a milliner, a marketing consultant, and an online trader. The scope explains the eviction. According to the letter from JJD Property Management, works will also be required on the second floor and roof, including replacement of the roof in its entirety.

The Clay, moving from rendering to reality

Three blocks north, the Clay Theater cleared its biggest hurdle. San Francisco's Historic Preservation Commission approved the restoration of the Clay Theater in a unanimous vote on April 1, 2026, marking a significant step in the broader Fillmore revitalization project. Key aspects of the renovation include seismic upgrades, updated projection and sound systems, and a restored 200-seat auditorium.

If you have not been inside since it closed, the ambition of the plan is the part that will surprise you.

"When complete, the theater will operate seven days a week with more than 500 annual screenings, including independent films, repertory programming" and 35mm presentation, according to project director Cody Allen.

The lobby is not just a lobby anymore. The new Clay will have fewer seats but a reconfigured stage and a lobby cafe with seating and a bookstore. And the corner unit next door is part of the same plan. The corner commercial space to the north of the theater is part of the project and is expected to house a new restaurant offering all-day service; the space formerly housed the Alice & Olivia boutique, and the buildings will not be combined but the lot line with the theater will be corrected. Allen described the concept to residents as an elevated all-day dining concept offering breakfast, lunch and dinner to theatergoers and to the neighborhood as a whole.

The renovation is being funded by Neil Mehta, the same investor behind 2001 Fillmore. The Clay renovation is expected to cost $5 million.

The weekend the jazz almost did not happen

The Jazz Festival that filled your street on July 4 and 5 came very close to not existing. After briefly facing cancellation in 2025 over a funding shortfall, the annual Fillmore Jazz Festival returned this weekend with two days of free live performances, food vendors, and merchants along Fillmore Street for its 4th of July tradition dating back to 1986. The gap was not small. The festival had been briefly canceled in 2025 after organizers faced a roughly $400,000 funding gap for annual operating costs, but it was revived days later with support from crypto billionaire Chris Larsen and his nonprofit Avenue Greenlight, along with additional community sponsors.

What returned was also bigger. New for 2026, the festival added three main stages and featured performances by 25+ local and nationally renowned artists across multiple music venues. Stages this year were named in honor of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Tony Bennett, and Johnny Mathis. Headliners included Kim Nalley on Saturday and Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers on Sunday at the Fillmore & California stage, alongside acts such as the Curtis Family C-Notes, Black Joy Choir, and the Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, with artistic direction led by Jason Olaine, who also serves as vice president of programming at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York.

If your dog was strange all weekend, the closures were the reason. The two-day festival ran from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on both days on Fillmore Street between Jackson and Eddy streets.

The quieter openings you may have missed

The Jazz Festival and the Clay approval got the coverage. Four other changes landed the same quarter and did not.

Nordstrom is coming back to the city on Fillmore. One more shop will be added at 1919 Fillmore as Nordstrom makes its comeback in the city; the new store will be a so-called "Nordstrom Local." A Local is not a department store. It is a small-format hub for pickups, alterations, and returns, which is a deliberate bet that the corridor is a service destination for people who already live nearby.

DON DON opened on California. The tiny former sushi bar BUBU at 2417 California Street, near Fillmore, has a new name, DON DON, and a new purpose; owner Kevin Chen says the original BUBU space was simply too small to hold enough tables, so he moved BUBU to join forces with the NONO space at Fillmore and Sutter, combining the two restaurants under one roof, and the original BUBU is now DON DON, a takeout-friendly spot stocked with ready-to-go sushi made fresh throughout the day. Open Tuesday through Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Maria Isabel took the old Ella's space. The Noosh chefs made a triumphant return to the neighborhood with Maria Isabel in the old Ella's space at California and Presidio. Same team that ended up at Dalida in the Presidio after the Noosh split, now back within walking distance of the corner where the story started.

The food ranking that reset the neighborhood conversation. In April, the Chronicle dropped its Top 100 list. Its new Top 100 restaurant list included two of the top five on Fillmore Street. Nearest the top at No. 2 is The Progress at 1525 Fillmore, the "statuesque sister to State Bird Provisions." At No. 4 is Copra, at 1700 Fillmore, helmed by chef Srijith Gopinathan, who established himself at Campton Place before taking over and reinventing the ex-Dosa space at Fillmore and Post in what was once a branch of the Bank of America.

Two of the five best restaurants in a city with something like four thousand of them are within a ten-minute walk of the Clay marquee.

What it adds up to

Here is the thesis you can carry into your next dinner conversation. The three biggest visible changes on Upper Fillmore this summer, Monami's construction, the Clay approval, and the return of the Jazz Festival, are landing in the same 90-day window because the same money is behind two of them and the third is happening on their block. Cody Allen is the point man for owner Neil Mehta, a neighborhood investor who in 2023 bought the Clay and several other buildings on Fillmore Street. Monami was hand-picked for the corner spot, and chef Bae acknowledged the help of Mehta's organization in a statement, thanking Mayor Daniel Lurie, District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, and the Upper Fillmore Revitalization Project.

The corridor has been through cycles before. What is different this time is that the cycles are being coordinated. Whether that is a good thing depends on whether your salon was upstairs at 2001 Fillmore in April, or whether you have been waiting five years for the Clay marquee to light up again.

Either way, the block you walked in June is not the block you will walk in October.

If you own a rental on Sacramento, California, or one of the side streets that feeds into this corridor, the leasing story on Upper Fillmore looks different at the end of 2026 than it did at the start of it. New restaurants, a working theater, and a returning retailer all raise the bar for what tenants expect and what they will pay to be within walking distance of it. Ray Amouzandeh works with Pacific Heights landlords on exactly that question. Get a fast leasing plan — schedule a free consultation.