Plans to raze the laundromat and mural on the southeast corner of 24th and York, adjacent to the Brava Theater Center, have been drawn. And as proposed, a five-story building with 8 condos over two commercial spaces on the ground floor will rise on the corner site which sits within Calle 24, San Francisco’s Latino Cultural District in the Mission.
As designed, and lauded by the Planning Department, the ground floor of the 2799 24th Street project would include parking for eight bikes and no cars. A roof deck would provide open space for the residents. And of course, each unit would have its own washer and dryer.
This looks like a great use of land.
WHO WILL THINK OF THE BUBBLES!?
Man this is going to massively gentrify this area, Oh Pops even in your new incarnation you are not long for this world.
Preserve the Laundromat! It is emblematic of the corridor’s cultural heritage, and we only have 23 other extant examples!
The one-bike-per-household metric is a key new urban planning measure.
I read about the concept in a new Danish planner’s PhD thesis (namelink) about the Effme neighborhood in Copenhagen.
All joking aside, this is an important example of gentrification. People with money who are moving into new or renovated units with built in washer/dryers don’t need laundromats.
Nice, nice, very nice.
good news!
Lots of good changes in this part of the Mission.
anon3, I live in this neighborhood. Within a one block radius of my front door there are 4 laundromats. It’s kinda unbelievable. All joking aside, it is an inevitability of gentrification. And this neighborhood is gentrifying FAST.
Great News! I remember it was a pharmacy back in the days.
Where are people going to launder their money?
Eight bikes? So, what, a largish closet?
It will be interesting to see how many cars are owned by the residents of this building.
How would one ever know?
I am not sure, though I have been wondering if there isn’t some way of using FOIA to get that information from the state.
my guess would be 8-10
Probably more like 50, spread all around the neighborhood and especially in your favorite parking spot
As a long time resident of the neighborhood I am more concerned with the fact that there are not more affordable or even middle class housing plans in development. SF doesn’t need more luxury housing at the expense of all other types of housing. A 5 story building will also be significantly taller than the surrounding buildings and dramatically change the skyline.
Aren’t there several BMR housing developments planned for the Mission? I specifically recall one at Shotwell/Cesar Chavez.
Only here would some condos which don’t even have private parking be called “luxury”.
They’re not luxury in any meaningful sense. They’re just really expensive– just like every other apartment, condo, and house, even the old, beat-up ones. Yes, no doubt there will be some fancy finishes and features, but those won’t account for more than a few percent of the price.
Thanks for your comments!
There should be twice the number of bike parking spaces! At least 2x per unit!
2x bike storage spaces does not remove the fact that this will dump additional cars on the streets competing for parking. Faith Based Transit Planning for the 3% vs. the majority is getting silly.
It’s true.
We need to start charging on a market-based system for overnight parking permits.
Every spot in the city should be metered.
There should be defined zones and a varying price based on demand.
The best way to make parking accessible is to stop treating it like a free zero cost resource.
Do we want to get people on bikes? Make owning a car a lot more expensive. Used cars that run for 250K miles are too cheap.
Use the surplus funds as a place to start for Muni improvements.
we are not going to fix transportation with a 19th century invention. there is no reason this city cant build a subway infrastructure. we will be lucky to get up to 5% biking by 2020. we have to have some reality to our transportation vision. i dont want more cars in the city because traffic is getting worse. but if there are new building in my neighborhood (which is not the mission), i want them to have parking because im sick of the people circling for parking. otherwise make a requiremnt that if you buy a unit without parking, you are not allowed to get a street permit. at the moment, the vast majority of buyers will also own a car, despite having a parking space
for the vast majority, there is not yet a viable alternative to driving.
This is a great spot for a car-free lifestyle. Most people don’t need a car, they just find it more convenient to own one. Let’s make it less convenient.
underground subways are a 19th century invention. The first opened in London in 1890 (namelink).
Automobiles were invented in the 19th century as well, amusingly enough.
and bicycles were invented in the 19th century. escalators too.
industrial revolution….
Where do you get your “3%” from? Did you just make that up?
Jake has sent several links to studies on here showing 3%. i dont have time to look them up, but you can.
thanks for pointing out the other 19th century inventions. i still think my point is valid. bike lanes are not going to make a dent in public transportation and traffic flow. im not pushing for more cars. However, the number of cars in this city are increasing. it would be good to limit that increase, but without viable transportation, thats hard to see happening. im pushing for more and better public transport, while acknowledging that a lot of people HAVE to drive
Jake made up some numbers claiming to show that the percentages reported by the ACS and the SFMTA were incorrect. Here are the actual correct numbers as reported by the MTA:
http://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/2013%20Bike%20Count%20Report.pdf
” For reference, the American Community Survey (ACS), which collects data from a sample of households, estimates San Francisco’s bicycle commute mode share to be 3.8% in 2012, compared to 3.4% in 2011″
And cycling has increased since 2011. 3.8% rounds to 4%, not 3%, as you well know.
A car is a 19th century transportation invention as well. Almost no one in San Francisco HAS to drive, everyone makes choices about where they live and work and how they chose to spend their free time. Some people find it more convenient to drive and they chose to impose the burden of that choice on everyone around them. These people should be discouraged by public policy.
I agree with you that we need to spend more on Muni and that building out a world class transportation system is the most important problem facing San Francisco. Bicycling can be a good stopgap to help fill in the holes in the meantime and is very popular and supported by 75% of San Franciscans. But while you claim to want to improve Muni, you plan to vote against the increased funding Muni needs to do its mission. How can that be?
NoeValleyJim, why do you pretend that you do not know what the bike usage percentage is? Jake and others have posted numerous links. BTW- did you ever get rid of that evil automobile you recently claimed you never use but your wife does? Let’s hope nobody ever outs you on Streetsblog that you are a car owning household.
Ahh are you all upset that someone posted an opinion that was different than yours? This isn’t the right blog for you then.
I do know the correct percentage, which is why I helpfully pointed out the error above. 6% of San Franciscans ride a bike daily, 17% weekly and 25% at least once a month. So the correct answer would be to talk about the infrastructure that helps 25% of all San Franciscans, not 3%.
I just did a quick google and the SFMTA says 3.5%. Posting without sources false statistics is really sad. Click on my name for link to SFMTA 2012 State of Cycling Report. NVJ , back up your numbers with a source.
If you had clicked on *my* link above, you would see that the bicycling mode share is 3.8%, per the 2013 SFMTA State of Cycling Report. You are a year behind the times.
My numbers come for the David Binder 2013 poll “DBR SF Voter Transportation Research Summary” referenced in this article by the Bicycle Coalition:
https://www.sfbike.org/news/new-poll-finds-strong-support-for-more-better-biking-in-san-francisco/
The link is broken for some reason, but the Bicycle Coalition references it in the statement “43% of voters are already riding a bike, with 25% of voters in San Francisco riding regularly, meaning a few times a month or more.” So I stand by my statement.
Actually NVJ, you are one year behind. The SFMTA report you linked to quotes from the 2012 ACS. The 2013 ACS for SF shows bike share of commute to work:
3.85% for people that reside in San Francisco (Table B08006)
2.66% for people that work in San Francisco (Table B08406)
If you lookup those ACS tables for San Francisco (namelink to B08406), you can see that they estimate about 472k SF residents work and about 653k people work in SF.
Bike advocates like to cherry pick by using the stats for residents of San Francisco and ignoring that many people commute to SF that don’t live here.
While I think the Binder poll was embarrassingly badly done, it did help to show that many many residents of San Francisco ride a bike apart from commuting. By contrast, the excellent quality data of the US Census ACS shows that of all the people that work in San Francisco, at most 3% commute by bike (2.66% plus the margin of error).
And I have never said that either the ACS or SFMTA stats are “incorrect”. Here is what I wrote months ago on SocketSite in response to another of your mischaracterizations:
I haven’t said the SFMTA reports, or their surveys, or the ACS data are wrong. They are fine for what they are. They deserve to be treated with respect, used where appropriate, and represented accurately.
I have pointed out that you misuse them. In your posts in this thread you have misunderstood the difference between a data set limited to “San Francisco residents” and a data set that includes everyone that spends time in San Francisco. You’ve also misunderstood the difference between a data set limited to work commutes and a data set for all trips.
It is interesting that you think that you are a better statistician than David Binder. He is widely regarded as the best pollster in San Francisco.
My comments were to the person who claimed that bicycling facilities were for the “3%”, which I disputed. What percentage of San Franciscans do you believe bicycled on the streets of San Francisco in the last week? What does the best data we have indicate?
I didn’t claim to be a better statistician than Binder. I’ve critiqued that specific poll before on SocketSite. You are welcome to revisit my critique if you want, but I doubt it will help make your case. Even Binder can blunder.
And speaking of blundering, why do you almost always misrepresent what I write?
Besides, I do agree with you that much much more than 3% of San Franciscans ride bikes. How much more I don’t know and if Binder’s rather pathetic one-off phone poll is the best data you have, well, tells us how little anyone really cares about the answer.
Of course neither the original post above by ‘J’ nor the later post by ‘Spencer’ fully qualifies to what set their “3%” value applies. Maybe they meant residents of San Francisco as you seem to have understood, maybe not.
If you care about the commuting mode mix in San Francisco, check the latest ACS data at my namelink.
only 8 unit condo? What a waste of the precious land. I would like to see 80 units built in the location with no parking. People should learn to live a car free life in SF.
If you are owning a car in the neighborhood, consider selling your car instead of complaining about lack of parking. Your car is part of the problem.
I live a block away from this spot. While a more-than-one-story building is surely better use of the space, what are they planning to do with the ground level space? Hopefully it will at least be a commercial space. It’d be nice if it were a laundromat. Even though there are a lot of them around here, I see this one getting a ton of use. I hope they bring back the mural, or something similar. There’s gotta be a way to build more housing without totally annihilating the current character of the neighborhood — and usability for lower-to-middle income folks.
I am horrified at the changes in my neighborhood! I have lived on York Street for 53 years and placing condos on that corner is an awful idea! People in my neighborhood NEED a LAUNDROMAT AND AFFORDABLE housing NOT condos!
That laundromat is a magnet for crime. Time for it to go. We need condos more than crime.