San Francisco condo tower is first project to be approved under mayor's neighborhood housing push
The San Francisco Planning Commission has approved the first new project that qualifies under Mayor Daniel Lurie's plan to build more housing in neighborhoods across the city.
The project is an eight-story condominium tower at 230 Anza Street in the Inner Richmond District across the University of San Francisco campus.
Allen Cohn has lived on that block of Anza Street for two decades. And for half that time, he's hoped the property next door would find itself a new owner.
"I mean we have all been thinking, families could be living here. And for some reason, it's been allowed to go undeveloped for ten years," Cohn said.
Cohn says what currently sits at 230 Anza Street is an eyesore. What could soon replace it is an eye-catcher. And from his perspective, not in a good way.
"And I'm afraid my little two-story building is going to look like the home in the movie 'Up,'" Cohn joked.
At Thursday night's Planning Commission meeting, the future of this long-neglected space was set into motion as the mayor's Family Zoning Plan's first new housing project. A rendering of the proposed condo tower from developer IvyHills LLC shows it rising above a neighborhood of mostly two- to three-story homes, with floor plans that range from one to three bedrooms.
During the meeting, Commissioner Amy Campbell acknowledged the awkward nature of the look, while making clear why she felt this needed to happen.
"You're right, it doesn't look like it fits in and I think that's kind of the growing pains of the family zoning plan" Campbell explained. "But I would argue that's not that the building is too tall but that we have allowed buildings to stay small."
Juliana Lamm-Perez, a member of SF YIMBY, a group that advocates for new housing, agrees that this project is exactly what the city needs right now. And while she believes aesthetics do matter, the bottom line is what projects like this will do for the community.
"It if we can have more of those smaller scale developments, it increases the development that we can have, it is better for our financial landscape, it's better for our investment in the city," Lamm-Perez shared.
The upzoning plan was adopted last year, with the goal of targeting the city's western and northern neighborhoods that have typically been resistant to development.
A spokesperson for the city's Planning Department said the project "will add a mix of affordable and market rate apartments, including apartments for families - the critical 'missing middle' housing needed to keep families in the City."
As he showed us the not-so-lovely part of living next to an empty property, Cohn wanted to make one thing clear: he is not a NIMBY. He just wonders if this is the right space for a project of this size.
"This is just my gut feel. Eight stories just seems kind of weird," Cohn said. "But as the commissioner said, well of course it seems weird, you know this is the first one."
The plan is to demolish what is left of the two-story property that currently stands, and then begin building the condo.
We did reach out to the potential new owner for comment but did not hear back from her.
