Plans have surfaced for a potential office-to-housing conversion at 2134 Van Ness Avenue between Polk Gulch and Pacific Heights in San Francisco. The project would provide a minor residential addition to a small Tudor Revival-style office building. GBA Inc. is responsible for the application, which is not yet a development application.
The proposal involves a minor expansion of the 6,430-square-foot office space. New construction proposes four apartments across 6,700 square feet. Unit sizes have not been provided.
2134 Van Ness Avenue circa 1964, image courtesy San Francisco Planning Department
The latest project review meeting request comes less than a month after the property was listed for sale for a cost of $2.55 million. Ojai-based Chain of Lakes GRP LLC is listed as the current property owner.
The small 0.08-acre property is located on the east side of Van Ness Avenue between Broadway and Pacific Avenue. Future residents would live across from the recently completed Bus Rapid Transit lanes and a block from the commercial thoroughfare along Polk Street.
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Ah, returning to its original residential use.
Probably. According to the S.F. Planning Department’s Zoning map, the parcel’s zoned RC-4 – residential- commercial, high density. If we stand by and allow developers to underbuild routinely, I don’t know how Y-I-M-B-Y cheerleaders think that the private sector is going to build our way out of the housing crisis.
When most housing-concerned S.F. residents hear the phrase “Office-to-Housing Conversion”, the above property is NOT what comes to mind.
San Francisco still has about 30 percent vacancy in office space, even amid the current “AI Boom!” that real estate folks can’t stop talking about, and we could make a huge dent in the housing shortage if vacant and near-vacant office towers downtown were converted to housing. Small-bore projects like the one described above aren’t going to move the needle.
It’s a lot more difficult than said.
Chicago has been making steady progress in converting a handful of properties (industrial and commercial), and now we have thousands of new units in the pipeline, but the toll has been aggressive. A unique form of public/private funding has emerged; some buildings have entire cores being demolished to fit a residential floor plan. Then you have the cost of not just an entirely new structure, but also major retrofitting.
SF should absolutely be helping fund these instead of new builds that deliver an “affordable” unit at $1.1 million each, but tack on the new seismic and legality concerns, and SF sets the game for conversions to almost impossible organically.
This looks like it was a house converted to office use, and is between two housing buildings. Is it just be returned to what it was originally?