Preliminary permits have been filed for a five-story apartment complex at 2 Crestline Drive within the Twin Peaks neighborhood of San Francisco. Initial plans call for replacing the oddly shaped corner lot with a nine-unit complex. James Keith is responsible for the application.
The 65-foot-tall structure is expected to yield around 17,200 square feet, including 10,300 square feet of housing. The ground floor will include a four-car garage and bicycle storage for 11 bicycles. Unit types include two one-bedrooms, six two-bedrooms, and one three-bedroom apartment.
2 Crestline Drive, rendering by RG Architecture
RG Architecture is responsible for the design. Illustrations show the apartment complex wrapped in a light brick veneer with thin metal window frames and a board-formed concrete base. There will be a row of balconies overlooking Burnett Drive, and a shared rooftop deck offering residents enviable views across the city.
The recent plans propose dividing an existing lot in half, separating a vacant corner lot from a 1964-built ten-unit apartment building that would remain unchanged. The portion where construction might occur is currently occupied by two trees, shrubbery, and a neighborhood sign labelled “Vista Francisco.” Public records show the property last sold in 2019 for just under $3.5 million, and the current property owner is listed as a San Francisco-based resident.
2 Crestline Drive vertical cross-section, illustration by RG Architecture
2 Crestline Drive site map, illustration by RG Architecture
The tiny 0.07-acre property is located at the intersection of Burnett Avenue and Crestline Drive. Future residents will be less than 15 minutes away from the Castro, or twenty minutes away from the 24th Street BART Station by bus. The Diamond Heights grocery store is about twenty minutes away on foot.
2 Crestline Drive, image via Google Street View
The pre-application invokes Senate Bill 330 to streamline the approval process. The estimated cost and timeline for construction have yet to be established.
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Great design and love the maximization of space the developer is pursuing on this lot!
Great use of BRICK to maximize maximalized profit taking in SAN FRANCISCO! Derp!
Wow! this is pretty
PRETTY they call it, lol! Amazing. It never ceases, the sucking sound.
This is beautiful. Love the use of an akward space. We have a bunch of these in West Oakland that would be great as housing.
9 units on 3k sf is awesome. We have so many small lots that would benefit from these kinds of skinnier builds. Even on our main thoroughfares like San Pablo and International.
The entirety of Market…
There are at least 15 sites just wasting away along one of the country’s most transit-friendly corridors. A perfect example of where 0-parking TODs should be pushed. 1/2 of these sites are just underutilized chunks of land with some existing buildings wasting away, but every awkward, quadrilateral parking lot big enough for 5+ cars is plenty big for a hardy studio. Hell, that’s a decent 1-bedroom.
That is horrible design.
Beautiful! An elegant design.
My only design feedback is that balconies should not have thin brick (cracking)
Nine units and four parking slots? That’s a non-starter as far as I’m concerned. Yes, the Diamond Heights Safeway is a “twenty minute walk,” but how is one expected to schlep all the groceries home? More business for Lyft, Uber, and Waymo.
As for the photo caption, the lot is not being “replaced” by the building…it will be built ON the lot!
Good Eggs delivery is another good alternative to driving to the grocery store.
Yawn. There are bus routes to complement the walk to Mollie or Safeway. I’m sure whoever ends up there without a car will figure it out. The demand exists.
Such suburban default thinking. Not everyone buys six weeks worth of groceries in one full swoop. This isn’t San Ramon. A lot of people just buy what they need for the next day or two and carry it home. Done and done.
I have a car by the way, but I rarely use it for grocery shopping.
Ablist BS on display thank you daytripper e-worker…
This city and its stupidity will never cease to amaze.
It’s ableist (the right spelling) to think driving is the default for all. Last time I checked, most blind individuals shouldn’t be behind the wheel. Amusement parks are ableist for those with heart conditions. Gyms are ableist for the lazy. Food pantries are ableist for the kitchen-less. Birds are ableist to the un-winged.
People should be bullied for this kinda word vomit.
The 37 Corbett stops right outside the front door, providing a direct connection with the Safeway at Market and Church and operating every 20 to 30 minutes seven days a week.
….isn’t that what replacing a lot means? did you think they were going to move the land somewhere else?
Great design for an odd space. I’d live there if it were in the flatlands. A 20 minute walk uphill carrying two bags of groceries is not for me. All other necessary stores are farther away. Getting on a Muni bus with the groceries isn’t much better. OTH, the cost of owning, maintaining, gassing up and insuring are car as the price of all of those items soars will pay for lots of Uber and Lyft rides. And food can be dekivered if you trust some otherwise unemployable person to pick the best fresh fish, meat, fruits and vegetables.
“The Diamond Heights grocery store is about twenty minutes away on foot.”
No one, –absolutely zero people– are going to walk up and down hills, back and forth, with 2 to 3 bags of groceries in each hand. Show me one instance of this happening, ever. What a disingenuous statement and I wonder why this ‘fact’ was included in the review.
This sort of thing (carrying groceries on inclines) is common in Italian villages/towns, etc. other hilly neighborhoods for centuries. More common is 1 bag in each hand, maybe a backpack or rolling cart.
Looking at the renderings, I see no vertical control joints on the brickwork. This looks like it’s going to be filled with cracks as it settles. Better to have a mixed facade, in order to hide the control joints and allow for expansion / contraction / settling, etc. in the brick. I appreciate the use of material, but let an actual brick contractor edit the design for real life, instead of a designer with a pipedream cartoon.
I am caring for my wife and drive to shop many times a week. Ignoring parking is nuts.
That’s cool. Don’t live here.
Next!
I saw one of these in Comoros and I bought one.
Clearly we should leave this as an empty lot rather than think we could find five households that could manage to live in a city without a car. FFS. On the other hand, I do know many folks who pick up a day or two’s worth of groceries on their way home – walking, biking or bussing. These are folks that don’t have a Costco membership.
Does no one value open space? This lot and many others in this neighborhood are deeded as open space, which gives the neighborhood its unique feel as a bit of the country in the city. The trees and shrubbery are beautiful and they provide something that wall-to-wall buildings cannot.
Others have tried to build on these parcels and gotten preliminary approval, only to be rejected later when the deed restrictions have been found.
I am well aware of the 2013 denial, but their finding was actually the opposite. It was determined at the Board of Appeals that there was no recorded open space restriction.
The 2013 Crestline case is irrelevant on its facts and impermissible as a matter of law. Factually, the elements that drove the 2013 denial—public stairs, pedestrian circulation, quasi-public open-space use, and a Vista-Francisco planned-development context—are wholly absent from 2 Crestline. This parcel is a private, unused corner lot without any public access or view-corridor implications. Therefore, the factual predicate of the 2013 case does not exist here.
But even if one were to disregard these plain factual distinctions, SB 330 (Gov. Code § 66300) bars the City from relying on the 2013 reasoning. The 2013 reversal relied exclusively on subjective, discretionary judgments—perceived open-space character, neighborhood context, and preservation of non-mapped views—that SB 330 expressly prohibits as a basis for denying or conditioning a compliant housing entitlement. As a result, the 2013 rationale is both factually inapplicable and legally superseded. The City must process the 2 Crestline ministerially and approve it upon confirmation of objective standards compliance.
Oh wow, this design actually looks really nice. That’s refreshing to be able to say for once.
Judging from the renderings, there’s plenty of available street parking! 😉