Preliminary permits have been filed for the fourth Safeway redevelopment proposal in San Francisco. This time, project developer Align Real Estate is looking to replace the grocery store with a 25-story sloped tower, containing nearly eight hundred rental apartments, at 15 Marina Boulevard in the Marina District.
15 Marina Boulevard vertical elevation, illustration by Arquitectonica
15 Marina Boulevard sidewalk view, rendering by Arquitectonica
The application utilizes Senate Bill 330 to streamline the approval process and the State Density Bonus law to increase residential capacity by 39% above base zoning. SB 330 is a state law that prohibits local jurisdictions from enacting new laws that could downsize or delay new housing for qualifying proposals.
The recent SB330 pre-application has allowed Align Real Estate to lock existing planning code provisions for the site. The developer has also invoked Assembly Bill 2011, which streamlines potential housing on commercially zoned lots in exchange for a certain threshold of on-site affordable housing and workforce commitments.
15 Marina Boulevard, showcasing the new grocery store entrance, rendering by Arquitectonica
15 Marina Boulevard site plan, illustration by Arquitectonica
The roughly 297-foot-tall structure is expected to yield over a million square feet, including 744,700 square feet of housing, 63,200 square feet for the replacement grocery store, and 236,250 square feet for the subterranean garage. The project is expected to produce 790 rental apartments, of which 86 will be deed-restricted as affordable housing. Apartment sizes will vary with 88 studios, 485 one-bedrooms, 132 two-bedrooms, and 85 three-bedrooms. The garage will provide 164 spots for retail parking and 473 spaces for residential vehicular parking. Overall capacity for bicycles has not yet been specified.
Arquitectonica is responsible for the design. The complex will feature two asymmetrical peaks rising from the shared podium. As is typical with Arquitectonica’s portfolio, there is hardly a straight line across the building, with swooping balconies and curved walls wrapped around a central podium-top courtyard. The main entrance for the new grocery store will feature a wide, protruding canopy above curtainwall glass, an homage to the existing modernist storefront.
15 Marina Boulevard, image via Google Satellite
Demolition will be required for the existing 1959-built structure, a modernist facility designed by Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, featuring a mosaic art piece on the eastern exterior.
The roughly 1.8-acre property is located along Marina Boulevard between Buchanan Street and Laguna Street. Future residents would overlook Fort Mason, Gashouse Cove, and offer direct views of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The application for 15 Marina Boulevard is the latest and evidently the most controversial of four plans to replace a Safeway in San Francisco. The previous applications were located in the Fillmore District, Richmond District, and Bernal Heights. The estimated cost and timeline for construction have yet to be shared.
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With the mayor explicitly stating he’s against this project and will use all in his power to block it, I wonder if this dead upon arrival?
Would be interesting to see a “YIMBY” mayor actually deliver some using rather than blow hot air at a theoretical rezoning. Wanna know what adds to the housing supply? Developers that come with a plan to permit and build EXACTLY what the people want. Wanna know what stagnates society? Keeping a surface parking lot of an overpriced grocery store in a prime location as is.
I wanna say don’t F this up San Francisco, but it seems highly inevitable.
I get where you’re coming from, but the tendency to conflate YIMBYism with blindly rubber-stamping every single project isn’t progress.
Setting aside the inevitable, subjective arguments about whether a building is “ugly” or not, advocating for housing and demanding good, contextual housing are totally compatible, and frankly, essential.
Agreed. We definitely need more housing. Making 1) better use of surface parking while 2) expanding and modernizing grocery store space and 3) adding 790 units (86 of which will be affordable) is a slam dunk no brainer win-win-win.
I thought we learned that the superblock design just doesn’t work with SF’s fine-grain blocks. This should be 4-6 distinct buildings that meet the ground in a similar form to the existing buildings nearby. You can make it twice the height without making it feel completely out of place. Glass and steel doesn’t really mix well with the nearby buildings either. I’m all in favor of this development but this one feels like they took a Miami building and stuck it in the Marina. 100% build housing on this site, but instead of throwing this at the them, why not ask the Marina what they want and design a space that includes them? You don’t need much, just a year of meetings with the community to refine a design. You will still have pushback but at least it’s something that attempts to respect the community you want to build in. A good example is the redevelopment plans for the former CPMC hospital…
Year of meetings… Holy hell, the entitlement is heavy.
“Respects the community.” The community is dominated by federal land that’s crumbling into the bay and a parking lot. A block away is a highway overburdened by a plethora of gas stations and tired motels, with a fresh load of black top to welcome you to your 3-star stay. The adjacent neighborhood is dominated by homes with yellowed stucco, adorned with kitschy Italianate and Spanish-style details. Last I checked, mansard roofs were not a San Francisco vernacular.
Why not breathe some new life into the sleepy area? It fits right in with the finance bros, dipped in white, as they get trashed on the sidewalk outside Balboa Cafe. The new structure doesn’t detract from the Marina’s car-dominated lifestyle, and it manages to deliver a large grocery store while incorporating the original front arch of the entrance. If anything, the community is getting more from the redevelopment of this site. And to top it all off, literally, a little over a quarter mile away are a pair of 200-foot-tall towers hugging one of San Francisco’s biggest tourist traps. Last I checked, Ghirardelli Square managed to keep a crowd despite the looming towers across the street. And now, the Brustalist grey towers won’t be dominating the waterfront. It’s a compliment that also distracts from the cold starkness.
I don’t get it. Why do you hate San Francisco? Do you even live here? If so, why? Seems like Miami might be a better fit, drewl.
By the way, I know that you hate San Francisco, but 23,000,000 annual visitors from across the globe say otherwise.
You hate working-class people and city servants who can’t afford to live here.
As someone cleverly stated, if your city workers can’t afford to live in the city, San Francisco is, in fact, not a city; it’s a theme park.
Your city stopped being a city for the people in the 70’s when it froze virtually all potential new development with a blanket rezoning. Those in retirement today are now upset that their city has collapsed from the product of their malpractice. Streets littered by empty storefronts, class B office space virtually worthless, and an endless queue of right-wing loudmouths at the ready to broadcast the drug dealers and homeless spewen across the city core; maybe, just maybe, the status quo Dean Preston built was, in fact, the wrong direction for San Francisco.
Until kids walking to school aren’t burdened by extreme human decay or the safe haven queer folk relied upon can become affordable again, San Fsaferancisco has long lost its identity and will continue to dissolve into a playground for the ultra wealthy. If you don’t build luxury living here, overpaid AI industrialists will continue to outbid every other home.
Erm, it is very clear that you have absolutely no idea what you are even talking about. It’s like the only San Francisco you know is what you see on Youtube. Are you a Russian bot or something?
P.S., your average civil servant in San Francisco (not including teachers) gets paid more than you and I combined, so I wouldn’t worry too much about them….not that you are worried.
And the contempt that you show for workingclass people of color is not even worth mentioning, because everyone knows it.
AI brats are buying up everything regardless of what we do or don’t do. Why make it easier for them? Every jankyass Victorian or bungalow you tear down to build an AI tech pad with a fake ADU kicks out a longtime San Franciscan.
(Search up demographics for Marina, San Francisco on Point2Homes)
Either you need to study up on your city, or you know nothing about it. The construction of a grocery store will displace no one. Adding 790 rental apartments will improve housing accessibility as 86 of them are deed-restricted affordable.
Working class of color?? Virtually NONE of them live here, based on demographic statistics. My definition of city workers is not those on nonprofit salaries; it’s those who clean hotel rooms, run the back-of-house at your favorite restaurant, maintain MUNI lines, repair park infrastructure, etc., etc. You falsely made this about race, and the data proves the Marina is fairly undiverse.
And make it easier for AI folk to buy homes? That’s literally what we are doing now by not building anything. I BEG you to reread your logic. They are going to purchase homes regardless. How about we market shiny new ones so they can leave the scraps?
Uh, okay, so what you’re saying is that we need to destroy San Francisco in order to save it?
No thanks.
I suspect that Connie Chan is going to clean your Wiener’s clock next year.
It’s called evolution. San Francisco is not the same city as it was 50 years ago. Keeping the same design guidelines as if it were is why the city his highly susceptible to collapse, being highly reliant on a speculative market. Shall we remind you of Detroit?
The hysteria surrounding this proposal is in par with SF decrying the Transamerica Pyramid, and that structure is a little under 3x this building. The pearl cluthers today couldn’t fathom this city without it. The marketing alone is as iconic as the Golden Gate. And with the addition of Salesforce Tower, the skyline is framed so well. Being allowed to grow is what attracts more tourists. People have absolutely not stopped visiting London or NY because of new buildings.
I implore you to take a step back and imagine how Fort Mason Park would look framed on both sides. 800+ new residents would only benefit local businesses on the piers and along Chestnut St. Enough added taxpayers could maybe get a damn subway line down Van Ness and Geary.
“You hate San Francisco because you don’t think I should have a personal veto over any design I don’t like” is entitled psychopath nonsense. There’s literally a brutalist high rise right across Fort Mason from this. Get a grip.
What are you talking about….Fontana Towers?
In case you are, that’s what resulted in the blanket 40 foot height limit across most of San Francisco in the 1970s.
But I wouldn’t expect a transplanted tech bro like you to know this.
If San Francisco is not to the taste of you tech bros, why do you come here?
You sound like a bot, but I will respond as if you were a human. Have you ever actually been to the Marina? Fort Mason is not ‘crumbling into the bay’ and if it was would a 25 story building help? It’s not managing to deliver a grocery store, the lot isn’t just a parking lot right now, the grocery store is already there and the plan is to build on top of it, which means it would be closed for the time it takes to build the building. And what does it matter if there are already some towers in other places, that doesn’t mean we should build more right on the water front and on unstable sand dunes.
I was at the Marina’s Christmas market two weeks ago. Pier 4 and Aquatic Park Pier are literally crumbling at the shoreline. Not sure how collapsing infrastructure is a safe and fun alternative to maybe anything else other than… I don’t know… fixing sh*t?
The Maritime Museum is heavily weathered (based on the broken windows I saw and the crumbling ‘I assume’ water fountain). Most of the homes in the park are fine since they’re basically private homes, but it’s easy to spot the neglect. The train tunnel was a storage bin full of trash and shopping carts for whatever reason.
But what on earth did we do before our sparkly modern grocery stores? Did we not eat before these facilities were introduced? Lucky for locals, there’s a plethora of smaller markets around and a farmers’ market right at the piers. There’s even another family-owned grocery less than 1/2 mile from the Safeway! And with a neighborhood median income of $205k, I am confident they can afford an alternative to Safeway’s overpriced selection.
If plans do go forward, I recommend not suing every step of the construction process after they break ground. You’ll only further delay the inevitable. What’s cool about redeveloping a smaller grocery store? Getting a bigger one afterwards.
You aren’t familiar with architects like the ones at Arquitectonica. They don’t care what the community wants and don’t want to heed any feedback. They want to throw up a design that feeds the architects’ ego and builds their corporate brand, and that is the reason the design looks like it could be built in any city in the world.
& if the building is value engineered (see Arquitectonica’s Trinity Place on Market St. as proposed v final), g-d help this development.
1000%
The design is looks quite thoughtful to me. The asymmetrical peaks pay homage to the nearby hills (Russian Hill and Pacific Heights). And the redesigned grocery store retains the wide, protruding canopy above curtainwall glass, an homage to the existing modernist storefront. The swoopy balconies above add a sleek and modern touch, also paying a homage to the curvature of the waterfront.
I’m not sure what more you could ask for.
It’s more than just shape and paying very subtle homage to Safeway. I think it’s far more to do with completely ignoring Marina (or, more generally, SF) vernacular.
If this was an Italianate stucco box it would be bland and boring, if its glass its too modern and a Miami copy paste. Maybe its just a building designed in 2025 not 1925.
1000%
Because nobody’s opinion of development on private property that isn’t theirs actually matters.
Please build this, SF.
I like this concept. It has a nice silhouette and a sense of amenity – not just a race-to-the-bottom stucco box like the banal scheme in Bernal. And the Safeway itself is celebrated nicely. I gather this is the financial engine driving all the other sites. If this dies, the others will as well.
Not sure why the mayor is opposing this one. Bad move politically: supporting hack designs in the less well-off hoods and opposing a decent one in the fancy Marina. Go figure…
It’s totally out of scale and design for the neighborhood, and as Anthony said, it looks like Miami. It’s DOA for that location IMO.
No, it really isn’t. There’s plenty of mid-highrises (25 stories isn’t even that tall FFS) outside of the main downtown core. There just hasn’t been any in the Marina because it’s NIMBY AF. It’s high time that that changes.
It’s literally illegal for the city to deny a state law compliant development like this. The only thing that would stop this is economics.
Does it actually comply? I feel like this cut isn’t zoned for 275+ feet. I also imagine there’s a bit of zoning adjustment for adding residential with large scale retail, but I’m just shooting in the dark on that.
It’s out of scale for the neighborhood because the scale of the neighborhood is the problem. A scale that is artificially small from decades of rich people preventing development.
100%
Blame everything on the rich. Surprised you didn’t add racist. Your handke is misleading. You are clearly a democrat.
The Marina is fine the way it is. You don’t get to turn it into Vancouver just because you dislike San Francisco. People who love this city and have lived here for decades do. Your ridiculous YIMBY overreach is about to get destroyed. Brace yourselves.
The only people who have to brace themselves are the thousands of future homeless as you NIMBYs continue to ignore the housing crisis.
The Mayor is only opposing it because his rich friends in the Marina are going to fight tooth and nail against this. Too bad, an actually interesting looking building. Hope this one somehow goes through. Hopefully all those new state laws could help.
Lurie is exposing himself to be a major NIMBY.
Is that what pumping the breaks on a single project means to you? Just a tad more nuance may be worth including in your defining a mayor who just ushered in massive zoning changes and height increases across most of the city.
It is imperative that this get built. There is a corporation, Safeway, with a good vision.
The entire nation should unite to crush SF NIMBYs who want to block this for the dumbest possible reasons.
On Twitter/X, there is massive support for this.
Are you for real? You sound like an AI bot.
Pot meet kettle. The self-awareness of a paramecium.
Scotty McWiener just calling everyone opposing him an AI bot..haha
This should be built if only specifically to spite the Marina NIMBYs. They’re insufferable and need to be put in their place.
Disappointed in Lurie for opposing this. This is not out of character nor out of scale for San Francisco and the Marina for that matter. If San Francisco is to remain a viable city it needs to evolve and grow. I don’t think that this is even the highest and best use of the land, should be taller, more units, but working within existing state law isn’t a bad outcome. Build this now San Francisco. Get on with your life. Locking the city in 1972 is neither desirable nor healthy. There is so much underutilized potential in SF and this reasonable project is one very small step in the right direction. Take your fear mongering attitudes to Montana or Idaho if you don’t like cities but don’t keep wrecking ours.
100%
Should double the height and put a flag at the top that gives NIMBYs the finger.
Sharp.
Should double the height and put a nimby flag at the top
If this design is a no-go, then why aren’t all the other neighborhood monstrosities also a no-go?
We’d do so much better to build shorter, smaller buildings all over town with 10-30 units that fit nicely in their settings.
None of them should be no-gos.
All of the above. Give commercial landowners the right to build tall on their land, and house parcel owners the right to build the midrises you mention.
I think the craziest thing about the “I like more housing but just not here crowd” and the “SF is unique and Miami is bad crowd” is that they complain about how this will be luxury housing that won’t help provide affordable housing (even though it literally will) but won’t bat an eye if a 30 million dollar mansion is built in the same neighborhood. Where are the objections over multi-million dollar renovations of old Victorians that used to be split for apartments? Why aren’t you protesting outside all the second homes that multi-millionaires own across the city? If you only care about affordability when multi-family housing is built then you don’t really care about affordability, you just saw a post on facebook and felt compelled to comment on it.
They don’t care because avoiding a single ounce of aesthetic displeasure is worth another thousand homeless people. That’s why we have a housing crisis.
Sigh. Do you honestly think that building this and more luxury condos are going to solve San Francisco’s homeless crisis? Really? Do you think that the majority of the people living on the street do so because they can’t afford housing? Yes, some are, including the hardworking Latino families living in RVs near Lake Merced, but the sad fact is that most of the homeless living on the streets of San Francisco are mentally ill and cannot take care of themselvs and/or drug tourists who come here for the fenty. Even if they were conscious enough to apply for an appartment, no landlord is going to rent to someone who is not functional.
Shill for the luxury real estate industry all you want, but don’t pretend that it will resolve street conditions in the Tenderloin and South of Market. Your trickle-down, neoliberal approach was discredited back during the Reagan era.
I don’t believe that upholding architectural integrity and creating structures that conform to reasonable design standards is why we have a housing crisis.
What? Red herring? People are protesting condo > SFH conversions and many other small fry loss of housing issues all the time in this city.
The difference is that this project is literally being submitted for preliminary approval as we speak. It’s also far, far more impactful in most people’s eyes being that it’s a new building, looks absolutely nothing like anything in their neighborhood, feels 10x larger than anything else around it that hasn’t already been the subject of hate for decades and is designed by an architect who has a reputation for making flashy sh*t that most people don’t care for (not even in Miami).
Lol
There’s a hideous brutalist high rise on the other side of Fort Mason. “Larger than anything else around it.” 😂
Build it, looks beautiful. Enough with selfish Nimby.
It’s selfish to question scale and architecture while encouraging housing that respects its surroundings??? If anything, its selfish to think that everyone else should just lay down, quit participating in the public discourse about housing and zoning and kiss the feet of every project that gets proposed.
You very clearly don’t understand that this is explicitly legal, or illegal to deny, because people like you spent decades abusing the system to exercise personal vetos over things you subjectively dislike on private property that isn’t yours. Congratulations, you played yourself.
Another anon misses the point??? Not only am I fully pro-housing but also happy to question or critique the kinds of housing that are being proposed. Tricky, I know.
This is CLEARLY just a proposal; designed to whip people up, test the waters, gather interest and financing and in no way is it being impeded by challenging aesthetics or debating context, my guy.
This looks like Miami, not S.F.
Also, besides the Marina Safeway, the closing down of other Safeway stores for construction that will last years makes zero sense to middle class consumers, in a city already lacking in affordable options, leaving the very pricey Mollie Stones or the shamefully pricey Bi-Rite, and others.
First of all, it’s laughable that you think Safeway is for ‘middle-class consumers.’ Safeway is a private-equity asset bought and sold by packaged-food juggernauts whose business model is to rip off the customer and hoard real estate. We all need to just stop with the protests and let Safeway finally appeal to common sense and use their land for more than parking.
And given that there is a Trader Joe’s 15 minutes’ walk to the east of this store and soon to be a Grocery Outlet on the same block, I’m gonna go on the assumption that you’re fearing change more than fearing the loss of choices for ‘middle-class consumers.’ Not to mention, the local markets—actually run by lower-to-middle-class immigrants—will hugely benefit from Safeway being closed for a while. They’ll step up and become nicer places to shop.
Preach!
The love people hold for corporations that basically destroyed the essence of middle-class America is such extreme Stockholm syndrome. These companies are the puppeteers of society, but because monopolies are just the Boomer way of doing business, anything that fights that system is now a threat to our patriotism.
Maybe the Family Zoning plan should’ve not been passed so that developers could use builders remedy instead to get projects like these approved. Also, would be nice to have a like and dislike button for comments.
I am surprised at all the support for this. It’s totally out of scale and out of character with the neighborhood. The aerial view rendering reveals it for what it is: an eyesore of the highest magnitude. I agree with one of the early commenters, Anthony. An appropriate development of the site for housing would subdivide the lot into smaller parcels that could go up to, say, six stories in height, and not obliterate the neighborhood character. We do not want another Fontana Towers on the waterfront, and this would be even taller. The housing shortage in the city is being addressed by the upzoning plan already approved by the mayor’s office. No need to take a dump like this on the waterfront.
SF is the only city I know whose public policy is to keep the maximum number of people from where they most want to be…the waterfront. This building will provide over 1,000 people with a place to live…with spectacular views, a flat walking neighborhood, and not incidentally, places for current Marina residents to downsize and stay in their beloved neighborhood.