Downtown SF Whole Foods Made Weekly Emergency Calls Ahead of Closure
“…Data obtained by The Standard shows that a Downtown Whole Foods that opened in March 2022 and abruptly closed this week was the site of several overdoses, psychiatric episodes and other emergencies during its first six months of operations.
The fire department was dispatched 35 times to the Whole Foods at 1185 Market St. between the time it opened in March of last year and October 2022, according to the most recent data immediately available. Those calls were a mix of overdoses, medical emergencies and other disturbances such as reports of assaults and people bleeding at the high-end grocer.
One September 2022 overdose resulted in the death of a 30-year-old man named Steven Clark, who is remembered by family as an award-winning clarinet player who suffered from mental illness and addiction, according to his obituary.
The Whole Foods opened in March 2022 in close proximity to U.N. Plaza, a longtime hotspot for the city’s behavioral health crisis…”