Plans to raze the current Hayes & Kebab building and parking lot at 580 Hayes Street and construct a five-story building with 29 market-rate condos over ground floor retail and a basement garage for 20 cars could be approved this week.
As designed by Sternberg Benjamin Architects, the condos would average 1,080 square feet; the 8,000 square foot retail space could be configured to accommodate up to three separate restaurants with a fourth retail space along Ivy; and a central courtyard on the second floor would serve as the rear year for the Hayes Valley development.
Five of the proposed twenty parking spaces would be set aside for the retailers and the development team is planning to pay a fee rather than build any Below Market Rate (BMR) units on site.
The Art Modern building that currently sits on the 580 Hayes Street site was constructed as a neighborhood grocery store for Safeway in 1939 and plans for a five-story residential care facility for 90 seniors had been approved to rise on the corner parcel back in 2005 but never broke ground.
Should the new plans for 580 Hayes Street be approved, and we fully expect that they will, the paperwork to secure permits for the development has already been filed and they’re planning for a quick start.
Nothing against senior housing but the location is to vibrant for that ,
Senior housing would make far more sense off of the main retail strip
That’s an incredibly insensitive comment about seniors wasting a vibrant corner. I suspect your attitude may change as you age and begin to realize that the world (including Hayes Valley) wasn’t made for just you and your (I’m guessing white) hipster friends. Seniors can be just as vibrant – maybe just not in the one-dimensional way that you contemplate. They use services, go to restaurants and shop. And their younger family and friends come to visit them. Is it that you just don’t want to see old people in your space? Further, seniors NEED to be in a vibrant place with walkable access to transportation, shops and services so it actually makes sense for them to be there. Get out of your cocoon and imagine life for everyone.
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Excellent comments Steve. Thank you for saying what you did. I agree completely.
I have pulled away more from SS because there are so many continual negative, disrespectful and narrow-minded comments here anymore. Sadly SS has become another anonymous place for people to rant about what is wrong with San Francisco.
Well said.
Thanks, Steve. Much appreciated.
OMFG , how about a reality check and less PC BS ,
Senior Housing here would have been HORRIBLE along this section of Hayes ST ,
but would be a much better fit even if just a block away either along Linden or Ivy , ,
Hey Joseph A: You might want to just stop talking here and think deeply about what you have just said. You keep digging your hole deeper. You seriously do NOT have a clue as to how wrong you are.
Joseph A, as a near senior myself, I am wondering exactly why you think it would be HORRIBLE? Do you think we are unable to handle the “vitality” and that we need to be sheltered from active street life? Or is that we don’t blend well with your version of urban amenity-filled bespoke culture?
I’m a senior as well. With a great sense of humor, so I’m laughing at the “outrage” here. While I’d like my eventual “assisted living” home to be near some shops and restaurants, I DON’T need my shops to be as upscale as the kind of retail that has become the staple of Hayes Street – $200 skinny jeans (Nomads), $700 shoes (Gimme Shoes), $600 “vintage” ottomans, $300 bottles of Sake, $400 pieces of luggage…. I’d prefer to live in a nice section of, say, the Richmond, with lots of old-fashioned “comfort food” diners and restaurants (don’t need to hang out with 20-somethings at Beirgarten; instead I’d rather hang out at a local coffee shop that actually has many more regulars who are around my age, so I can make new friends who I have much more in common with).
Honestly, I’m pretty hip, but I feel no desire to hang out in Hayes Valley. It’s not my cup of tea. More power to those for whom it is, but really, let developers build new housing that draws new residents who REALLY want to be right there. No need to castigate them for doing so. Yes, it’d be nice to have more Senior Housing in San Francisco (a lot of it is being built at 55 Laguna), but why put it right smack dab in the middle of what’s become a VERY upscale location where I can’t afford most of the prices? Build it where I’d like to be, and not where YOU think I would like to be.
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@ EcceMorons:
Good points. I appreciate your commentary, but disagree with it. I believe we NEED to have senior housing completely within the mix of so called urban, hip neighborhoods. Just as we need family housing with kids there too. Neighborhoods that become so segregated by age/income group can begin to feel and behave just like gated communities; a narrowly defined, exclusive, NOT inclusive way of living.
Americans are not terribly comfortable with our aging people, and quite often want them “out of sight, out of mind”. That’s sad. It’s unlike that in many parts of Europe and Japan. We can do better.
As far as what Joseph A said, which was very curt and without backup, your comments at least are respectful.
Thanks, Futurist. I enjoy a respectful disagreement.
I would add though, that I’ve owned a building 2 blocks from this site for 25 years. (I’ll be moving out soon and renting my unit). In those 25 years, as units have turned over and been shown for re-rental, here’s the breakdown of appx. 1,000 applicants:
Age 20-25…. 49%
Age 26-30… 49%
Age 31-35…. 2%
Over age 35 0%
Seems pretty clear who wants to live here, and how doesn’t particularly want to live here. Why not build Senior Housing…where most Seniors would actually prefer to live?
EcceMorons,
The demographics of prospective tenants is often different from buyers. Prospective buyers are often in an older demographic. An elderly person who starts renting at market rate is 1) almost impossible because landlords are scared of the old who tend to move less and therefore lock the landlord into a rent control dead-end, 2) unlikely since people who can afford SF either as tenants or buyers are likely to have a solid financial situation. They have cumulated assets and therefore no reason to pay current crazy rents. They prefer to invest and use RE as part of an asset diversification process.
As a long time resident of Hayes Valley, I would welcome and embrace a senior center in our area. Seniors would bring balance, perspective, and the wisdom of their years. This would, in my humble opinion, enhance and not detract from the vibrancy of our neighborhood.
wear it futurist. your opinionated comments on neighborhood character are based on opinions, unfounded and without support. you have just been told from a senior why it is not desirable for them and you break it down to how japan and europe are more comfortable with aging seniors. i would venture most people are very comfortable with seniors and enjoy their company. you project your opinions as fact and it is really exhausting. now maybe seniors hanging at undefeated would be cool to you but the reason they don’t hang out at undefeated is because they most likely dont give two sh!ts about nostalgic urban kicks and its not cool for them.
This ‘vibrant’ location is precisely the sort of space I was hoping to find for my mother – someone who’s still active, and wants to be able to walk to things (instead of taking a cumbersome ‘senior shutte’) but can’t walk too far. This sort of venue is perfect for that.
Maybe you should share a cuppa with an elderly person – they can be a heck of a lot more ‘vibrant’ (and legitmate) than most of the bewhiskered hipsters flouncing around the neighborhood.
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Not sure why everyone is jumping on Joseph for stating the obvious. Kind of surprised to see so much politically correct Mau-Mauing from our regulars here. Of course it’s kind of a dumb place to stick senior housing. Retirees aren’t as a rule interested in scrimmaging for seats at hip bars or swimming through mobs of techbros at night. Some are, sure. But there are much better demographic fits for what that neighborhood has become.
I guess there was a time when the city filled up with Victorians that all looked alike. Now, it is filling up with multi-unit condos that are starting to all look alike…
Maybe you can pass a ballot measure that requires all new architecture to pass a Citizens Commission on Architectural Diversity (with one representative from each “community” in the City it would have to be a Citizens’ Congress, though).
Because there is always uniform agreement on what makes “good” architecture, especially when the back seat designers themselves have no money in a project.
I don’t know that “filling up” is the right word, but it’s nice to see someone finally acknowledge that most of SF’s architecture is inspired in waves.
And, identical to much new construction in LA, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver and on and on.
So much for regional vernacular?
Not complaining — observing American sameness
The shift from regional specialties to more central manufacturing. A lot has changed in 100 years.
You can find Vics in many cities in the country. SF just happens to have built a lot of it when it was popular. Also a factor is the 1906 earthquake and the rebuild in Victorian/Edwardian style.
Let’s not pretend that architects love doing this sort of sh!t. Every one I’ve ever talked to about SF is that its nearly impossible to get approval on anything other that what you see here… not that it can’t happen, but it requires a lot more persistence to make it happen.
Many architects need to read From Our House to Bauhaus. Architects trained in the hyper-intellectual madrassas of modern high design schools are not capable of building comfortable, humane, and affordable urban background buildings. It takes EVILLLLLL DEVELOPERS AND MONEYMEN to discipline the ARTISTES.
Victorians were much the same all over the country also – designs out of pattern books, bric-a-brack out of catalogues, etc. The Bay Region Tradition, considered the true local vernacular by architectural historians, was exemplified by Maybeck, Coxhead, Mullgardt, Thomas etc. in its first phase; Wurster, Esherick et al in the second; MLTW, Solomon in the third. It remains to be seen who of the current crop of architects, if any, will be judged by history to be carrying on that tradition of adventurous rich regionalism. As gribble notes, we live in a world culture today, where unfortunately regional differences are fewer and fewer.
Anyone who knows the Opera/Ballet/Symphony and all the eateries/stores that cater to this crowd knows this is an area much patronized by seniors. It would not be shocking to have some senior housing in this location. Actually there’s so much traffic before/after shows that it would be a good thing.
Good point! I always tell my friends that I love going to the Symphony because it’s one of the few places in town where approaching 50 I could still feel young!
Same for me when I go to the SFS. Wifey and I feel like we’re the young ones in there.
I have had my eyes on a building being constructed as a pied-à-terre for two years (live in Sonoma County). It is flat for easy walking, easy access to transit, has access to nice boutique stores and groceries – and is vibrant indeed. Maybe I can be the lone senior in the building i have in mind! haha.. I have lived there in the past and it has always been a bohemian haunt with the small shops and eateries .. and in ten years it will be too young for all these kids getting married and looking for … ? or they will stay and the melting pot will get even more interesting. Take Japan, where entire neighborhoods are set up for age groups commercially. That is what this Joesph is feeling, a town for more people like himself. Okay, but trendiness is a relative term, and I forgot more about that than he yet might know.
Um, there already is senior housing directly behind it called Age Song.
It seems to me they’re just expanding. Also, there is a family connection.
If the cutaway view shows that floors 4 and 5 are in-set from Ivy St., shouldn’t we see that in the overall rendering? It looks like the building hits Ivy street without retracting.
I could be mis-reading this though.
Also, it sounds like the senior housing are prior plans unrelated to these.