Formal plans have been filed for the Bernal Heights Safeway redevelopment at 3350 Mission Street in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. The project is one of several high-profile projects to bring high-density housing above grocery stores across the Bay Area. Align Real Estate is the project developer, filing on behalf of the property owner, Albertsons Companies.
3350 Mission Street pedestrian perspective, rendering by Perry Architects
3350 Mission Street birds-eye view, rendering by Perry Architects
The roughly 90-foot-tall structure is expected to yield around 479,000 square feet, including 274,200 square feet of housing, 55,000 square feet of commercial space for the ground-level Safeway, and 149,600 square feet for the 291-car garage. Additional parking will be provided for 286 bicycles. Residential amenities will include a fitness center and community room. The podium-style complex will feature an irregularly shaped loop forming three separate podium-top courtyards. Additional open space will be available with a rooftop balcony overlooking Mission Street.
The complex will include 379 units, comprising 65 studios, 185 one-bedrooms, 89 two-bedrooms, and 40 three-bedrooms. Of the 376 units, 76 will be deed-restricted as affordable units, allowing the application to invoke the State Density Bonus law and Senate Bill 330 to streamline the approval process and increase residential capacity.
3350 Mission Street, rendering by Perry Architects
3350 Mission Street site plan, illustration by Perry Architects
Perry Architects is responsible for the design, and C2 Collaborative is the landscape architect. Updated illustrations show a few minor tweaks to the original design shared last November, including wider windows, a double-height transparent entrance for the grocery store, and a dark black metal wrap to visually establish the ground floor. The exterior will be clad with white and wood-look solid phenolic resin panels.
The Bernal Heights proposal is part of a six-project portfolio, led by Align Real Estate and Albertsons, to build over 4,000 apartments across the Bay Area. Of the six plans, five would produce a replacement Safeway store, and one in Oakland would not replace the existing store, which is owned by Albertsons but occupied by Trader Joe’s.
3350 Mission Street site plan, image via plan set
The 2.15-acre property is located between Mission Street and San Jose Avenue, with a narrow access point extending to 29th Street near 3300 Mission Street. Future residents would be a two-minute walk from the Muni Light Rail station serviced by the J Church line, or an eight-minute bus ride from the 24th Street BART Station.
Construction is estimated to cost around $170 million, a figure not inclusive of all development costs. The timeline for groundbreaking has not yet been shared.
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I really like the combination of white with the faux wood color. I prefer it so much to the bright orange or yellow or blue or whatever that other projects have mixed it.
The future of SF is not skyscrapers…it’s a lot of six story buildings like this.
Think of SF in 50-100 years.
– These parking lots and awful polluting gas stations / auto body shops will be filled in with housing. Lighting, landscaping, foot traffic, more property tax revenue…
– The entire East Side (Dogpatch, Candlestick, Mission Bay), will be filled in with a mix of housing and parks, creating a full ring of parks around the entire city.
– Climate change (sad) will have added five degrees, which SF could actually use.
– The Victorian aesthetic in a post-modern future could be an insanely cool Steampunk vibe.
– The alleys of SoMa could be super cool, if there were actually enough residents nearby.
SF is just getting started. Don’t forget that NYC had a 200 year head start.
The only two things it needs to solve/avoid are:
– Not having a devastating earthquake/fire.
– Figuring out how to solve the drug crisis and/or close the SRO’s in the Tenderloin and move towards high quality,low-income housing somewhere else (Candlestick?).
A future of six-story apartment buildings is not a great future. The landscape of San Francisco will look like every other suburban or B-tier city in America. Austin, Seattle, Indianapolis… They are building this exact building in Burlingame, San Mateo, and Mountain View too. The Dogpatch and Mission Bay are fine, but full of soulless buildings you will find anywhere else in America.
I assume PP is referring to scale and massing rather than aesthetics. Plenty of charming, walkable and dense cities are 6-8 stories, tightly packed and filled with a variety of architectural styles, eg. Paris, Barcelona, Tokyo, Mexico City, etc.
Agreed, Bobby, but in any of those cities (and many others around the world, and even some in the US) you will arguably see much better architectural design on average than this mediocrity…
1000%
And all you’ll be able to do is cry about it like an absolute loser because they didn’t ask you if you liked the aesthetics.
Six story buildings are great when they’re designed with imagination and sensitivity. Check out 855 Brannan in SOMA or 1180 Fourth in Mission Bay.
I appreciate the improved Safeway entrance on this latest scheme however. But the wide parking access across from Virginia street is grim as can be. It should be one-way In on Mission, one-way Out on San Jose to improve pedestrian safety and urban design.
We are a B-tier city.
I will die a happy architect if I never see offsetting windows zig zagging every floor on a mediocre massive block sized “5 over 1”. There has to be a better way to make these buildings blend better with the neighborhood architecture. Fine with the height, even more height in one part of the building could help with the massing. Just so tired of these place-less buildings…
But yay happy for the added density and more housing on an underutilized site. and very happy they’re keeping a grocery store as part of the project.
I think that’s partly SF design review doing its thing. The rules don’t literally require zig-zag windows, but they push facade articulation / breaking up the massing / varied materials.
There are undoubtedly strict and absurd guidelines in place, but how much of that is the cause for this kind of architecture now?
Architects are totally capable (even mediocre ones) at getting around a lot of those requirements. I think this has waaayyy more to do with “narrow” margins for developers and architects being conditioned into delivering “safe bet” designs and rounds of revision that water everything down to the dollar per square foot ROI. I’m not sure it’s the architect, or the city and also not entirely the developer’s fault.
Cost rules design right now. We continue to move into a future where more and more is cut just to get housing built. No architect dreams of designing these – it is out of necessity.
Whatever happened to the “Bay” windows of San Francisco? Why not use the feature that is so SF and can add light and air to the units? I grew up in the Mission and everybody had bay windows and used them for ventilation and light.
100% – Every apartment I’ve ever lived in San Francisco had a bay window, and it does add so much space and light into small apartments. Would love if these began to come back to the vernacular of low-midrise apartment buildings.
I mean, all windows provide air flow and light. But Bay Windows in particular are still very much used in smaller projects. I don’t think the city design guide requires them for larger, mid-rise/high-rise structures.
What happened to “Bay” windows? $$$$ as exemplified by the Mira, and those aren’t even “Bay” windows in the vernacular sense.
Hey this thing looks just like all the plywood five-over-ones sprouting up alongside Hwy 101 in South City! But I guess it’s better than a parking lot? I know the “Build It” crowd will be complaining that this isn’t 65 stories, but you know what? San Francisco ain’t Manhattan. Skyscrapers, with a few exceptions, belong in the urban core, not out in the neighborhoods.
And while we’re at it, can we get an infill BART station where the Shell station is now? That would be another good “opportunity site.”
It’s a specific type of terminal, untreatable brain rot to talk about a 6 story apartment complex like it’s Hudson Yards.
Anonymouse, if anyone knows about brain rot, it’s you brah. Sorry about your condition. Hopefully it’s not too painful.
Please don’t cancel me.
You’re the most impotent, pathetic whiner in this city. Nothing you’ve ever done or said has affected anything in the way you want it to. And it’ll continue that way because you’re like an ex- confederate pursuing an unjust and stupid lost cause.
There are already examples of what you wrongly call “skyscrapers” in the Mission that were built in the early 20th century, but you don’t care about those because you’re fundamentally dishonest.
Hey, man, cool it.
Are they keeping that weird driveway to 29th St?
It looks like too many boxes. It would look nicer with different heights for the buildings. Maybe a high rise should be included if it pencils.
Is that skinny part of the lot that front 29th Street still going to be vehicle access?
Don’t worry, you can still trick there in the driveway brah.
I’m so sick of every new apartment complex looking like this, please just abolish San Francisco’s architectural code already
The code isn’t the problem, it’s the architects and the developer who lack imagination. 855 Brannan in SOMA or 1180 Fourth in Mission Bay are good examples of similar scale buildings with more engaging and generous design.
IT’S THE DEVELOPER and CITY that push for affordability agendas/tight profit margins. Good things to have, but you sacrifice design in the process.
The Marina Safeway will be able to charge higher rents with such a location, and the finishes reflect that.
Here? We are handicapped by the local authority and their agenda. It’s good to consider all community members in major changes, but too many cooks spoil the pot. See “Monster in the Mission” for a similar outcome.
I’d be curious what design constraints the architects were forced to endure. I am also critical of architects who regurgitate slop, but as a regional trend, this architectural style is not unique.
The architectural code is a big part of the problem, it requires large buildings to have modulation, facade articulation, and multiple facade materials as anti-massing measures, the code encourages buildings to look like this. Whenever a new building is forced to revise its design by the planner board the revision almost always looks worse than the original design. And you see this sort of thing with other American cities too because they have the same sort of anti-massing regulations.
Now do the Castro Safeway.
We old-timers call it the Duboce Safeway.
I’m so glad this hole in Mission Street is being filled.