Permits have been filed for an eight-story infill project at 228 Collins Street in San Francisco’s Inner Richmond District. The project invokes the State Density Bonus law to potentially add 38 apartments at the corner of Collins Street and Geary Boulevard. Tim Brown is listed as the property owner, filing through 228 Collins LLC.
228 Collins Street side view, rendering by Kerman Morris Architects
228 Collins Street front elevation, rendering by Kerman Morris Architects
The 87-foot-tall structure is expected to yield around 41,150 square feet, including 38,800 square feet of housing, 300 square feet of commercial retail space, and 2,070 square feet of parking. Once complete, the project will include 38 apartments available for sale above a tiny ground-floor shop space. Unit sizes will vary with 18 one-bedrooms, 19 two-bedrooms, and one three-bedroom residence. Parking will be included for 11 cars and 38 bicycles.
The application is requesting a 24.5% density bonus above the base zoning, invoking Senate Bill 330 and the State Density Bonus Law. The site will include four affordable units for households earning around 80% of the area’s median income. The requested zoning waivers relate to building height, open space, facade articulation, dwelling size mix, and more.
228 Collins Street, rendering by Kerman Morris Architects
228 Collins Street ground-level floor plan, illustration by Kerman Morris Architects
228 Collins Street, image via Google Street View
Kerman Morris Architects is responsible for the design. Renderings show an articulated facade with a mix of light tan and blue panels around floor-to-ceiling windows.
The 0.11-acre property sits at the corner of Collins Street and Geary Boulevard, a couple of blocks from the City Center shopping mall and a block from the USF Lone Mountain campus. Demolition will be required for the existing former self-service car wash. The estimated construction cost and timeline have not yet been shared.
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say what you will about the colors and materials, but this is the kind of residential scale, density and parking ratio that could be copied and pasted to basically every neighborhood commercial district in the whole bay area.
I agree. The key words here are commercial districts. I’m not either kind of IMBY but I think there are a lot of opportunities for this type of housing along transit-rich corridors. What I don’t want to see are multi-story structures plopped down in established two- and three-story neighbourhoods like something that landed from outer space.
“What I don’t want to see”
Most of Daly City and Sunset were designed at this terrible scale; it looks like a concrete paradise, and keeping it downscaled directly costs the peninsula/Bay Area as a whole. Thousands of people commute an hour+ because the rent’s too damn high. Prop 13 keeps exacerbating the issue.
Sure, we can slap on some design requirements. I hate checkerboarded metal panels, too. But the dictation of private land-use is why SF’s affordability hell is also draining its culture of uniqueness and why eating out averages $40 these days.
Drewl: The Sunset (and much of Daly City) are waaaaay denser than virtually anything in 98.9 percent of this sprawled-out disaster of a country. I bet the Sunset probably houses more people that whatever godforsaken suburb you come from. The Sunset and Richmond are basically West Coast versions of Baltimore or Philadelphia: rowhouses. When they were new they were cheap and perfect for first-time homebuyers. I also think they are kind of charming and very, very San Francisco. I don’t want to see them destroyed. Why don’t we start with redeveloping shopping malls and office parks first. After all, we can’t cram everyone that you want to cram into the Bay Area. They can live somewhere else like St. Louis. Plus, most rich tech bros don’t want to live in San Francisco. They would rather commute from Atherton in their Lambos. I’d rather not have those DBs for neighbors.
Look, it’s b*tch boy out of the blue!
cmon man, chill with the vitriol
You are probably the gold standard of pathetic takes.
So you agree Sunset and Daly City should be subsidized by the rest of the state for the sake of preserving a jungle of overhead power lines, 2-story endless blocks that are 100-200′ longer than the average walkable SF neighborhood, a forced setback that makes the driveway the majority of your curb appeal, dead lawns too small to enjoy but forced to maintain, and a car culture so entitled they can’t accept they’ve been gifted a 2-mile pedestrian boulevard with endless recreation opportunities.
I grew up in a town designed with direct train access to our major city, the ability to walk/bike to basically anything and everything, but also connected to a region of 100 miles of biking/hiking trails, and the existence of nature on the street, not just a boxwood hedge with occasional fennel and pampas grass.
Yeah, both areas have a significant edge in density from where I grew up, but we could easily fit double the number of people with much more open space that actually gets used. A little more inward, and my local area beats Sunset’s density by over 1000/sqmi.
From a walkability standpoint, Hayes St, Columbus, and 24th all have a charm you can’t begin to find across those 12 sq mi. Irving St is fun, but with 3-6-story buildings, it’s an atypical outlier. Noreiga has some good bites, but it’s dominated by curb cuts, power lines, and 20-30 ft of extra pavement that can easily use a road diet. Slap 5-6 stories on every lot hugging Taraval or Judah. No major transit line should ever have 2 stories or less hugging its arterial.
Well said, Scotty. I read this column mostly to learn about any abominations planned for my own neighborhood, which sits close to a designated drug wasteland. Your comments rise above the juvenile catcalls and insults of the usual suspects.
You deserve the needles you step on.
Xenophobia is disgusting.
Also, the Sunset has really, really, deep lots measuring 120 feet from the sidewalk to the rear property line. You can easily build a decent-sized ADU in the back. Double the density without tearing down a neighborhood that people love.
Sam Gonzales – There is no xenophobia in my comment. I don’t care what ethnicity the drug sellers are – I want them gone. If you had people screaming and defecating nearby, you might feel the same.
Definitely. It’s the perfect place to add density, right along a transit corridor with lots of commerce in the area. I like it when there’s at least a small bit of retail included, as I think it makes the urban fabric so much better, even as I recognize that we don’t need as much retail these days given Amazon and other factors.
This plate metal look is hideous, but yes, agreed.
Yes yes yes! Exactly the type of buildings we need all over! If the neighbors complain about the 8 stories they are simply delusional.
Simple, practical, looks good. A little short for being right on the 38.
Great project. More like this, please.
No sidewalk walls woohoo! And the sides facing other buildings have no windows! Literally ideal conditions. This everywhere.
What do you mean by “no sidewalk walls”?
It’s one of my biggest peeves about new buildings: ugly metal doors, blank walls and garage doors occupying most of the street-facing ground floor, and this building is no different. They have the little corner commercial space, at least, but there’s still 75% of the frontage being dead space. I get that you need room for utilities, but is it really necessary to put them front and center like this?
Compare older buildings of a similar height like 4717 Geary. Almost the whole frontage is “active”, with a single utility door that’s like 4 feet wide.
Building codes greatly change how we manage the ground floor.
Various utility companies also require easy access for service and maintenance. 4717 Geary was built when the average household produced significantly less waste. In 1927, the average car per American household was 0.68. Today, that number is 2.28.
So factor in a lot more room needed for fire suppression systems (didn’t exist in 1927), IT closets and buildings’ control systems (didn’t exist in 1927), parking needs that ballooned over the century, the existence of a trash room, ADA access, which didn’t exist until 1990 and has been refined many times since, and still fit all these needs + commercail area code needs on the ground floor, we’re given an impoosible task that’s simply unachievable from our 1920’s past. It’s literally impossible.
I mean the rendering shows that a lot of the first floor external walls are broken up by windows?
Some of the “windows” in the rendering look into the electrical room and the bike room. I don’t know if it’s intended to be misleading, but it sure seems that way.
They do that on high-rises all the time. You can walk around the financial district and see a glass wall but no windows. Parking garages get the same treatment. They are “windows” but not acting as such. It’s meant to look like a proper ground-floor facade, but it’s fake.
That’s perfect scale for the neighborhood. It would be nice to see this type of building all along Geary. Although, ideally, they would look better aesthetically.
I’m hoping this project will be a stake in the ground that inspires more development on that stretch of Geary just past Masonic. Right now, the proportion of the street width to building height on Geary make it a dreary corridor, especially in the innermost portion of the Richmond.
Not that Van Ness is my favorite streetscape in the city, but re-imagining Geary with a similar vibe would be a significant improvement and would make it a much more compelling asset to the neighborhood. Right now, the delta between Clement and Geary is insane!
Great project. Textbook. Build it!!
It would be nice to hear what someone living on Collins
(between Geary and Anza) have to say about the project.
Nice project.
Go Bears!