Yesterday we published a post about developers’ plans to raze a whole city block at 19th and Bryant in order to build a giant condo complex. In the comments section, neighbor TBone hipped us to this vintage article from the year 2000, which laments an eerily similar condo complex plan — one you just may recognize:
The project is being proposed by Stein Kingsley Stein Investments (SKS) (partly financed by the late William Simon, Treasury secretary under Reagan). SKS is also rehabbing a nearby warehouse into an office building at 19th and Harrison Streets. SKS’s headquarters are in the former Green Glen laundry building at 18th and Folsom — another SKS office conversion project.
SKS is notorious for having been the biggest contributor to Mayor Willie Brown’s re-election campaign (plopping down $100,000 in political juice).
The Bryant Square site also includes the former Pacific Felt Co. brick factory building, which was rehabbed into 35 live/work lofts (at prices up to $610,000), called “The Mill.” In the photo below The Mill is the brick building at left, the three-story curtain wall building at right formerly housed a sweater factory (now evicted).
Read on for lots more info and criticism, and more photos. Or jump straight to any of the following topics:
Braindead Growth
New Edge Downtown without Transit Support
Environmental Injustice
Displacing Artists and Blue-Collar Industry
A Daily Tsunami of Muscle Cars
Open Space: Gated Fortress or Public Plaza?
Approval Sparks Uproar
(I actually have some friends who live in this place now. One is an elementary school P.E. teacher, one is a lawyer, and they’re very nice people.)
One should also note how many years that space sat as a giant hole in the ground.
And is there public open space on the property as had been promised?
(I’m sure there’s lots of nice people living there, but it’s so strange to bulldoze active businesses to make way for housing that will likely be marketed to people working in another town down the peninsula. You can’t blame the people who move in. You can’t blame the owner for selling. You gotta blame the planning department.)
Owner sells? I guess that’s a right or something. Though a responsible owner, committed to the city, would do something good and lasting with the property. You know, make an impact. The owners of the Red Vic are a good example. Otherwise the sole purpose of owning property is investment — and then we have what we have now.
People making bank, way over SF and especially Mission median, moving in … Well, if they do work far away that should be discouraged at least. Also each one of those people, statistically, is making a contribution to elevating property values and rent. And what if they overbid? And never adctuslly live there? AirBnB?
The planning dept.? They just approved a bunch of housing and tried to get concessions. They have no control over the development costs, asking price, sources of funding. They also had no control over the bust which supposedly caused the hole in the ground (though other city depts should’ve stepped in).
See, it’s always easy to blame some anonymous Kafka-seque government … But it really is an interconnected puzzle and you can definetely change patterns by messiing with pieces.