Plans to either partially or totally demolish the single-story brick and timber building which is currently home to the Fitzgerald Furniture Company on the northeast corner of 19th and Bryant in the Mission have been submitted to Planning for review.
And as proposed, a six-story building would rise on the 2750 19th Street site with 60 condos over 10,000 square feet of ground floor retail space and parking for 31 cars, or 62 if stacked, in an underground garage.
If approved, the project would trigger the city’s Better Streets Plan and would likely result in a sidewalk “bulb-out” at Bryant and 19th along with other streetscape improvements as well. We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.
UPDATE: In response to a reader’s question below, the 2750 19th Street site is zoned Urban Mixed Use which is intended to serve as a buffer between residential districts and PDR districts in the Eastern Neighborhoods and allows for light manufacturing, home and business services, arts activities and wholesaling, but also permits for housing, retail, educational facilities, and nighttime entertainment uses.
Wow, this area is growing super fast! There is no holding back. Wish I got one of those junkie single family home down the block from this area years ago.
There’s still time in Excelsior and Bayview.
Shhhhh….
Did you see the story about 1298 Fitzgerald recently? That @3lot invitation to demolition that sold recently for $975K? I drove it several times when it was on the market with mixed feelings. No matter how nice of a place you build there, it’s still very hoody in the immediate surroundings.
I will be interested to see how that project shapes up and if the builders need to borrow to build it, who will lend.
Yeah it’s an interesting property- can subdivide to 3 or 4 lots, or build 9 units on the whole shebang. That SE corner of bayview is the area I like the least- away from the main shopping area of 3rd, and near dicey industrial, and close to the ghetto projects. I like the northern part of BV better.
It’s too much work/hassle IMO. Maybe in 5-10 years it would payoff as a good investment, if the area lifts, which I think it will, but I don’t want my payoff in 5-10 years. Very hard to buy and hold new construction in the city.
Happy its being developed but wish there was a way to retain the current Brick facade.
[Editor’s Note: As does the Planning Department. From the Department’s initial response to the proposal: “For textural and material continuity with the existing context, consider retaining the brick façade which could also serve to distinguish the ground floor uses from the residential uses above.”]
Bricks bricks!
“My friends from planning school all get to live in Brooklyn and they have so many brick buildings and I really like brick buildings and it makes me feel all cool and urban and by golly if there are bricks involved lets save them.”
‘Please consider an adaptive reuse design that will wind up looking like a stucco cube hunkered down over the brick walls that you will need to reinforce with steel to make sure they don’t fall down and when you build the stucco box from within you will shore up the foundation under the existing brick that represents the historic tradition of using brick to build brick buildings.
There’s something attractive about a plain brick building, but it’s hardly something that deserves to be preserved.
I agree wholeheartedly about the attractiveness of plain brick buildings. Just have a drive around Jackson Square or the Northeast Waterfront (where all the icehouses used to be). Those were basic run-of-the-mill industrial warehouses, but were saved and now add lots of charm and character to what was an otherwise run-down industrial neighborhood. I think we should preserve plain brick buildings like this one. At least to an extent (even if you utilize facadism).
The old warehouses are a lot bigger and taller than this one-story.
Where is this business going to go? And the employees. Isn’t this also a [PDR] area or whatever the light manufacturing designation is these days??
[Editor’s Note: The site is zoned Urban Mixed Use which is intended to serve as a buffer between residential districts and PDR districts in the Eastern Neighborhoods and allows for light manufacturing, home and business services, arts activities and wholesaling, but also permits housing, retail, educational facilities, and nighttime entertainment uses.]
someplace else.
The brick facade is nothing special, and hardly telegraphs “ground floor retail” to passers-by.
Wish they were required to bury the wires – I wish that were a blanket requirement across the City. Such eyesores, and such unnecessary safety risks in quakes.
Agreed. SF will never be a truly beautiful city until all the wires go underground.
There is an organized effort (San Francisco Coalition to Underground Utilities), and a change.org petition, to push the city back into action on utility undergrounding (it stopped after completing the wealthy neighborhoods). Please get involved!
Thanks! Very useful links. We’re in the inner Richmond, and it’s obvious and striking that as you go from block to block, one of the key variables between “what a cute street” and “ugh, tract home hell” is the presence of rampant overhead wires. Same style homes, same amount of street vegetation, yet the wire have such a huge visual impact.
inner richmond resident too, and completely agree.
Bring it on!
Hope that it ends up looking like the Pacific Felt Company building across the street. But it likely won’t. It’ll be sterile, cookie-cutter, and boring.
More PDR jobs being lost in this neighborhood and still no comprehensive plan as to how we preserve them. Sad.
Though I think the building owner should be able to develop his property, I see [no] reason to celebrate tearing down this handsome building employing 30 furniture makers. I hope the owners intend to relocate their facility to other PDR space nearby.
This is right across from that other 6-story housing proposal where Cell Space was. Has anyone heard what’s going on with that? Also the Calumet building has major interior construction going on, albeit without permits.
UPDATE: Plans for Six Stories at Bryant and 19th Closer to Reality