The Tenderloin neighborhood has been struggling to get a grocery store:

It seems like the simplest of necessities: a full-service grocery store. But things are never simple at the corner of Eddy and Taylor streets in the heart of the Tenderloin, San Francisco’s densest neighborhood and one of its most notorious.

A local nonprofit has been working with city officials for two years to open a grocery store here, an area more known for drug dealers and prostitution than for its thousands of children and families. That admittedly well-deserved reputation, combined with the neighborhood’s poor residents, security concerns and a lack of parking and financing, has made it nearly impossible.

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“It’s so important to have, but it’s one of those things that most of us live our lives without being aware of - except for the people who have to hop onto Muni and lug back their groceries,” said Don Falk, executive director of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp., which owns a parking lot at Eddy and Taylor streets. The nonprofit housing company hopes to develop the land into a 14-story residential tower for low-income families, with a grocery store on the ground floor.

But after several studies, a lot of outreach and a few close calls, Falk and Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has met with grocers, aren’t much closer than they were two years ago.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/27/BARD11TSUL.DTL