Vanessa Lee, co-owner of Smoke Soul Kitchen, has applied to open Chapter 3 — a bookstore, café, and wine bar — at 4512 3rd Street in Bayview Hunters Point, backed by a city Storefront Opportunity Grant. No dedicated bookstore has operated in the neighborhood since Just A Touch Christian Bookstore closed.

At 4512 3rd Street in Bayview Hunters Point — a storefront that until recently housed a MetroPCS dealer — a vacant address has landed on the city's 2026 Storefront Opportunity Grant recipient list, recorded as a "Café, Wine Bar & Theater" under development. The applicant behind the project is Vanessa Lee, co-owner of Smoke Soul Kitchen at 4618 3rd Street a few doors down, who has proposed the venture under the name Chapter 3: a bookstore, café, and evening wine bar aimed at filling out a commercial strip that has lacked a dedicated reading room since Just A Touch Christian Bookstore closed.

The SF Examiner reported that Lee's application went before the Planning Commission, where the proposed use was described as a bookstore and community space. The city's Office of Economic & Workforce Development lists the address on its 2026 Storefront Opportunity Grant roll — a program the department uses to seed businesses on corridors it has prioritized for commercial recovery. Third Street qualifies on multiple counts. No building permit number for the project has yet appeared in the Department of Building Inspection's public data portal.

Lee is already an anchor of this particular block. Smoke Soul Kitchen, which she co-owns with Fred Davis, added a to-go window in April 2026, and Mission Local has covered it as among the corridor's more visible working businesses. Chapter 3, if it opens as proposed, would add used-book exchange, readings, and arts events to a stretch of Third Street where the city's own planning documents call for mixed cultural uses.

The neighborhood's signals are mixed in the underlying data. According to DataSF, Bayview Hunters Point saw 22 eviction notices filed in the 90 days preceding this report — with recent filings recorded on the 1600 block of Oakdale Avenue, the 1400 block of Quesada Avenue, and the 800 block of Jamestown Avenue. Residents filed 590 service requests through 311 in the past week. Those numbers describe the texture of a neighborhood under persistent pressure — not a backdrop for a single opening, but the context in which any new business on Third Street is deciding to put down roots.

Marcus Books, for years Bayview's most prominent Black-owned bookstore, relocated to Oakland in 2014. The Linda Brooks-Burton Library on Third Street has since been the neighborhood's main source of books. Chapter 3 would be the first commercial bookstore on the corridor in years — if Lee's application clears planning and the storefront is built out. The grant award is confirmed; the timeline, and the permit, are still in process.

Passersby on 3rd Street will find nothing yet at 4512 — no awning, no construction fence. But the city's grant list names it, and the commission has reviewed it. That's two verifiable steps toward something.