The fire-ravaged property at 659 Union Street in North Beach was already slated to be redeveloped as 23 residential units and a ground-floor restaurant space. However, the current landlord has planned a change to a taller building with more units for the site. The catch is, that the remaining building facade is part of a proposal up for consideration to designate the area a historic district. If that happens, the facade stays and the increased density building plans will not go through.
Last week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that after speaking with Jeff Jurrow, the landlord’s current plan is to try to beat the clock and gain approvals for the new building before the May 8th and May 9th meetings on the district designation.
With a highly expedited timeline, Jurrow hopes to get the approvals locked in under state guidelines, including SB423 and SB330. So long as the plan meets the required affordable housing component to qualify for these, Jurrow plans to use the laws in conjunction with San Francisco city approvals to grandfather in the development project in spite of the possible future designation.
659 Union Street Previous Design Rendering, image by Gould Evans
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Just rebuild the building as it was and maybe add a one-story penthouse? This isn’t Atlanta.
You are correct; this is not Atlanta. Atlanta has much more affordable housing options because you don’t have endless bureaucracy, red tape and NIMBYs trying to block new housing at every turn.
Thank goodness there’s a developer willing to make an effort to do the right thing.
If you like Atlanta so much, maybe you could live there instead?
There is only one San Francisco.
There’s also only one Atlanta.
Thank god.
Except there are plenty of other cities that are pretty much like it like Charlotte, Dallas, Houston….pretty much every Southern city is a sprawled out, low-density, car-dependent hellhole.
There’s been many, many different San Franciscos, there’s not just one and never has been. If this building was intact it would be one thing but it’s a burned out shell and should have been torn down a decade ago. And what the hell does Atlanta have to do with absolutely anything???
You’re either not from here or you are just simply ignorant of our city’s history or culture.
Atlanta is to me the ultimate nowheresville, sprawled-out mess that is the norm for American cities.
You are literally criticizing Atlanta for being sprawled out and then losing your mind over the possibility of a 5 or 6 story building in the middle of the country’s second densest city.
Whatever it is build it tall and dense.
Why? It’s a historic neighborhood facing a park. There are plenty of places for tall buildings in San Francisco. This is not one of them.
Tokyo, Copenhagen, and Helsinki are all historic cities yet fully capable of building. An astonishing thing they have in common is very low to minimal homeless populations. Aesthetics are critical to each city, yet the quality of human life doesn’t hinder progress.
A fire-ravaged property like this wouldn’t have sat idle for years like this in a proper city.
IIRC, the fire that damaged this building was almost ten (10) years ago. This proposal is about the landlord attempting to maximize their rental income from the lot, by waiting out the former tenants who were displaced by the fire. Blocking the historic district is just gravy.
In a proper city, you wouldn’t have had the landlord sitting on a fire-ravaged property like this for four or five years over the time it would take to get their insurance company to finance a replacement, just to gain the ability to build more market-rate units and deny the former tenants the ability to return to their neighborhood.
Lots of f’ed up things about this project and its site, but using the disguise of “historicalism” to continue to block anything and everything that doesn’t fit into what is typically a wealthy enclave’s ideals is predatory. The Transamerica Building is a 1/2 mile away, and we’re fuming over an additional story?
The fire is indeed a tragedy. You are a fool if you still count on returning to that property. It’s been 10 years, and nothing has happened. Win your losses in court; it’s why we have renters insurance. The rules of our games suck, but there’s nothing to be done. Adding and changing the rules have been attempted, and it’s also why SF is so disproportionally unequal and unaffordable. Requiring new construction to build out of literal garbage to retain its historic tax rating is asinine. Non-industrial projects requiring a lengthy environmental review in an urban environment is ludicrous.
I am not defending the developer; plenty makes him sound lazy, but you are giving him an impossible task in today’s dollar amounts. It is partially his fault, but he is not solely responsible. A man had rent of $300 a month!? You’d have to move to different states or have 20 roommates to get that back. The city would need to pair up with the developer because I have never seen a modern-day developer work out of charity.
Just to clarify. The fire that displaced the residents was in 2013, and the building wasn’t returned to a safe state for the return of residents when another fire happened at the same site in 2018. So the owner(s) have been intentionally sitting on this for almost twelve years, not ten.
But it’s the landlord’s responsibility for the site sitting there as a burned out eyesore for so long, not The City of San Francisco’s.
That’s the absolute definition of nimbyism! It’s fine JUST NOT IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD. Facing a park, the horror! It’s north facing and would have absolutely no impact on the park whatsoever.
Uh, it’s south of the park, so no, a skyscraper is going to block sun to the park during the winter.
I swear you YIMBYs spout almost as much nonsense as Hair Furor.
In what world does a 5 or 6 story building qualify as a skyscraper? There is a 29 story apartment tower 2.5 blocks from this site.
People wonder why San Francisco is no longer a cosmopolitan, sophisticated city. It’s bc people like North Beach NIMBYs, and the Tyrants of Telegraph Hill (and the sunset), who refuse to allow for the necessary growth that helps keeps a city diverse and a cultural center.
No one is making you stay.
No one is forcing you to stay either, Fred. If you’re going to screech every time something in a large city changes that you dont personally like it, maybe is *you* that needs to get the hell out.
I am from here and I will not be chased out by transplanted YIMBY bullies/developer shills.
Don’t worry, all previous residents wanting to move back to their homes will never get to because of this exact logic.
No future generations of existing residents will have the opportunity except for a minimal multi-billionaire few. Keep crying at the “loss” of one structure that’s been gone for a decade while the rest of the city crumbles for a wealthy class of righteousness.