Fillmore West Site to Reopen for Concerts, Events

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Fillmore West, 1970

In 1968, San Francisco rock music impresario Bill Graham shifted his operations in that city from the Fillmore Auditorium, a venue located at Geary Boulevard and Fillmore Street, to a larger room called the Carousel Ballroom. Renaming it Fillmore West, Graham presented many of the most famous artists of the day, including Santana, Aretha Franklin, Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin. Then, in 1971, disillusioned by the changing state of the music industry, he shuttered Fillmore West (as well as its New York counterpart, Fillmore East) and the space, at the corner of Market Street and South Van Ness Avenue, became an auto dealership.

Now, some 47 years after the last concert was played at Fillmore West, the space—vacated by the Honda shop—will once again present live music and other events. The two-story, 3,000-capacity room, according to an article posted by ABC7News.com in San Francisco, will be called SVN West and will be managed by Non Plus Ultra, which also hosts events at the SF Mint, the Palace of Fine Arts and other San Francisco venues.

The interior of what is now SVN West (Photo from the venue’s Facebook page)

No specific schedule has been announced yet but, according to the article, “On June 14, the venue will host its first concert since 1971, a fundraiser to support the students of Project Wreckless, a nonprofit that teaches classic car restoration techniques to at-risk youth and other community members.” The new venue has been approved for mixed-use development.

The original Fillmore Auditorium was reopened by Graham in the mid-’80s, closed for some time due to the 1989 earthquake that ravaged the Bay Area, then reopened in 1994. Since 2007, as The Fillmore, it has been run by Live Nation and presents concerts on a regular basis. The Fillmore brand is also licensed to several other venues around the country.

Listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival recorded at Fillmore West in 1969