Zoned for development up to 320 feet in height, Goodwill Industries is preparing to sell its two and three story buildings along Mission Street between South Van Ness Avenue and 11th Street.
The 2.3 acre parcel upon which Goodwill’s San Francisco headquarters and prominent corner store sit could accommodate the development up to 600 housing units according to the Business Times.
The site which had been in contract to be sold to developer David Choo in 2007 prior to the market crash in San Francisco is expected to hit the market in early 2014.
Having outgrown the current buildings on the block and expected to reap up to $60 million on the Mission Street sale, Goodwill plans to “seek alternate site(s) for all of its current Mission Street functions, ideally within the city of San Francisco.”
UPDATE: While the Van Ness and Market Downtown Residential Special Use District in which Goodwill’s property sits allows for heights of up to 400 feet at the corners of Market and Van Ness, the parcels above are currently zoned for development up to 320 feet mid-block along South Van Ness and 11th Street, with the corner of South Van Ness and Mission currently zoned for up to 250 feet in height and the majority of the Mission Street frontage zoned for no more than 85 feet.
Makes too much sense
Why doesn’t every McDonald’s in SF do this? They often have big parking lots in prime spots. The one on 24th and Mission is closed for remoldeling
Great news for my immediate neighborhood. There are so many new potential projects along Market and Van Ness. Hoping it will improve our neighborhood/help make our streets safer. Maybe one day we can clean up the area around the heroin hotel (civic center hotel/SF prison release SRO).
Yeah so I live just a half block from the site. I have no problem with density…its not how dense you make it, its how you make it dense. Mission and the surround streets are already at capacity and I see no MTA plans to ease that. With another 600 units and likely 1000 new residents they better figure it out BEFORE they dump this monster on the corner. The impacts will surely affect us.
On the other hand, not having to pick up discarded clothing from Goodwill’s clients when they change in our neighborhood will be fine. Nor will dealing with Goodwill’s worker’s taking their breaks and lighting up their tea or drinking their lunch will also be nice. Sorry, but that is the truth…Goodwill management has helped out with the situation so don’t want to dump on management or the good work Goodwill does.
Woohoo more housing!
UPDATE: While the Van Ness and Market Downtown Residential Special Use District in which Goodwill’s property sits allows for heights of up to 400 feet at the corners of Market and Van Ness, the parcels above are currently zoned for development up to 320 feet mid-block along South Van Ness and 11th Street, with the corner of South Van Ness and Mission currently only zoned for up to 250 feet in height and the majority of the Mission Street frontage zoned for 85 feet.
WOW. If this and One Van Ness get built in the next 5 years, with the Emerald Fund’s smaller project and the completion of NEMA and 100 Van Ness, this will breathe incredible vitality into an underutilized area of our city. Hayes Valley only continues to add fantastic new shops, restaurants, and bars, and with the Mid-Market Twitterfication on one side and the Ballet/Opera/Symphony on the other, not to mention public transit to boot, I can’t imagine how this will not be a hugely successful neighborhood.
@JWS Interesting points. When you think about the Mid Market boom it’s interesting to think about how this is also going to impact the Church/Market and Castro/Market areas. Their immediate access (train, walking, biking, driving) is only going to drive up prices (and development?) in those areas.
@Anonymous – While I have spent very little time in the Castro and have no “dog in the race”, so to speak, I am wondering what the Castro will look like in ten years or so. You have the impossibly hip Hayes Valley, Mission, and Noe Valley encroaching on all sides, what seems to be hundreds (thousands?) of brand new luxury units all down Market, a resurgence of popularity for Dolores Park, and the younger class of LGBTQ citizens setting up camp in Oakland instead of SF due to high rents. Not to mention that some of the hotter bars in the area (Churchill and Blackbird come to mind) are essentially “mixed crowd” at best by now, but are essentially normal bars. Does anybody who is a part of the Castro community have any thoughts on this? Will this area face gentrification, or will it continue to be the center of the LGBTQ scene for the Bay Area (an honest question, as I’m removed from that scene and have little knowledge of it). I would find all this development threatening, to some extent.
Please don’t ever call a predominantly straight bar a “normal” bar.
Regarding changes in the Castro: Here’s one gay person’s take: Cities are living organisms and grow and change and morph. When I came to SF in 1977 the gay hood was Polk Street. This is where the majority of gay bars were, where Halloween took place, etc. And prior to the gay neighborhood being on Polk Street, it was on Broadway near Columbus (which at one time was the Latino immigrant neighborhood, as well as the Basque neighborhood). Castro became the gay neighborhood when it was filled with cheap run down houses and the Irish homeowners were selling and moving to the burbs, and there was a large influx of gay men with enough money to buy, and a proclivity to improve property. With the advent of AIDs, a lot of vacancies opened up in the Castro, and straight families began moving in. And yes young people are settling in Oakland today because that is where the real estate opportunity is. If Oakland were a borough of SF like Brooklyn is a borough of NYC, no one would think anything of it. It is just a reflection of when SF stopped annexing that Oakland is a different city. I am not threatened at all.
Great for this particular part of town. I feel bad for the people in that large new building on south van ness.
The area now is basically a cesspool/garbage dump. The more paying people here the better it gets.
Only 600 units? Can’t they build a 100 story building with 10,000 units? Bigger, taller please. Once we build the millionth new unit in SF, all the rents and real estate prices will go down. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
@Emo – My apologies.
@Jim – Incredibly interesting history. Great read. Thanks for sharing!
This intersection is really not ped or residential friendly, but let’s hope that some streetscape and Van Ness improvements make it more inviting rather than an expressway.
As for the Brooklyn reference…before the late 90s if you said you lived in Brooklyn people laughed at you. Then it became the borough of choice for people priced out of Manhattan and now because of it’s hip and trendy status most of it is unaffordable except for certain sketchy sections. I should have bought that 1BD on Park Slope in 1997 for 50k when I had the chance.
“Not to mention that some of the hotter bars in the area (Churchill and Blackbird come to mind) are essentially “mixed crowd” at best by now, but are essentially normal bars”
And sorry to do the “in my day” thing but the idea that Church and Market is even the “Castro” I think is pretty recent. The Churchill was an Irish bar into the late 1980’s I am pretty sure (I think I know someone who knows the old owner)
Hi Jim
Interesting history. I have always heard of the gay scene being in the Polk area even back to the 1950’s. Cops used to go down there and harass people and shame them in the newspaper. PBS has an interesting documentary on this.
Broadway near Columbus I think was a Filipino area not Hispanic. There was the famous International Hotel redevelopment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Hotel_%28San_Francisco%29
We’re moving the Castro conversation to: Is The Identity Of The Castro Under Threat?
How long till the car dealership on the sw corner of Van Ness and Market gets torn down and a new building put there as well? I am still impressed with the amount of new construction that has sprouted up all along Market from 4th all the way up through the Castro. At this point it averages more than one new building a block. Good to see this project joining the rest.
The Honda dealership won’t go into play until Roger Boas decides he is old enough (he is) that it’s time to sell out the biz and wrap up his life. Not sure if he has family interested in taking commissions on every car sale by providing the house. Roger owns the site and dealership ….I believe.
Ahh John Boas (son?) is running the joint…perhaps $65M will do the trick. I thought I heard that Doug Shorenstein was interested in the site at one time???
No surprise that this site will be sold and developed , its a great place to place for housing and will take pressure off the transportation network that currently has so many commuting into SF.
Most McDonald’s don’t own the land. They occupy their sites on extremely long-term ground leases.
Schaetzer is indeed correct. MCD does ground leases and NNN leases. The leases go upwards of 20 years with options to renew if the site is successful (and most are).
UPDATE: Goodwill’s Prominent Mission Street Corner In Contract.
UPDATE: First Peek At Related’s Plans For Mission And Van Ness Development.