Plans to level the 3-story medical office building at 3330 Geary Boulevard, between Commonwealth and Parker Avenues and across from Mel’s Drive-In, have been drawn.
And as envisioned, a six-story building with 41 residential units (a mix of 16 one-bedrooms, 19 twos and 6 threes) over 3,700 square feet of ground floor retail/commercial space and a basement garage for 41 cars will rise up to 65 feet in height upon the parcel on the southern border of Jordan Park, leveraging San Francisco’s HOME SF bonus height program to build over the 40-foot limit for the site as currently zoned.
But while the plans are likely to excite those seeking more density along the Geary Corridor, they’re likely to come as a blow to the non-profit Haight Ashbury Psychological Services (HAPS).
HAPS, which provides low-fee psychotherapy to those in need, as well as education, training and supervision to those who serve, recently relocated to the Geary Boulevard building having been displaced from their home on Hayes, which they had occupied for 37 years, due to plans for another residential development and spent six months and $65,000 on the move which was largely funded by way of a GoFundMe campaign.
Yipes. How do you say “incompatible”
It would seem that the 3-story buildings on either side of this are mirror images of each other, which – paradoxically – both makes gives this project appear planned, and points out its out-of-scaleness.
The *existing* buildings are out of scale with this gigantic roadway—those 3-story relics deserve a cozy two lane street, and Geary needs 8+ stories of housing.
Amen.
Precisely. NIMBYs want to preserve Geary as some kind of shrine to poor urban planning from the 1940s/50s,
The developer should get some sort of City aesthetic improvement tax credit for tearing down the existing fugly pile of stucco.
HAPS is a worthy cause. Paying them $65k to move will buy the project some good will from the Supervisors who have listen to the usual Nimbys.
I live around the corner and want this!!! I’ve lived at my current property for 10 years. This is smart development. Agreed, these little buildings are out of scale.
Good one!
What’s out of scale are buildings in general. Return the Richmond and Sunset areas to their former glory days of trees and dunes.
That building will be out of scale. It’s way too low. Geary is a wide street. We should be building 20 stories all down the corridor.
Dunes yes – trees no. SF, prior to its settlement, was pretty much devoid of trees. A vast wasteland of sand dunes and scrub brush.
One small nit. This building is not in the Richmond. It’s in Laurel Heights. It’s a few blocks away.
Wrong, Laurel Heights is east of this location, from Spruce to Masonic and from Geary to California..
Or, the more progressive point of view would be this: Perhaps the smaller buildings are still stuck in the past, and in fact, the new one is very appropriate and correct scale for the scale of Geary Blvd.. Geary is not a one lane dirt road, in case you haven’t noticed.
This is very appropriate for the location, the use and the architecture appears to be handsome, modern and fresh.
Build it.
You have to start somewhere with density. This is the appropriate sized building for the Geary Corridor. More to come, hopefully.
Personally I find homelessness more of a problem than your emotions over the skyline.
PerHAPS they can relocate to the ground floor when the project is completed. In all seriousness, I do hope they find a long-term location in an area that is accessible to transit. They are providing a much needed and undervalued service.
The development as proposed does not include an office component into which HAPS could move.
What’s the fog/weather like in this area?
Not too bad, often windy but not that foggy.
And of course there’s no subway going down Geary, but they are going to paint one lane and call it bus rapid transit.
San Francisco, world class city everyone! World. Class. City.
Hey, just because it’s one of the most expensive urban areas in the world, with a ton of tech and VC dollars in its grip, why would you expect first-rate transit?
By most standards SF is not a world class city. It is no Paris or NYC or Chicago or Belgrade. It’s not even LA. But the point is taken. There is not the transportation infrastructure to support all of this proposed increased density. Some say that the western areas of the city should have their fare share of increased density which is absurd as there is not the road capacity to support it. 19th. is a nightmare. Geary is closer in but to add tens of thousands of units along its length is also absurd. The infrastructure can’t sustain this kind of growth. SF is a second rate city in terms of transportation efficiency and putting up more buildings given that situation is putting the cart before the horse. There is only one real solution and hopefully more will come to embrace it as the transportation situation worsens.
Fixing public transportation on Geary is not complicated. Buy some more peak hour buses, clean them daily, and have SFPD dedicate a traffic officer to making sure cars stay out of the lane. Not rocket science.
Instead we pay 30+ officers to guard SF Hall – making everybody go through metal detectors in case a citizen has too much change in their pocket. Mis-allocated Municipal resources. sigh.
First of all, City Hall is run by the Sheriff’s Office and has nothing to do with Traffic enforcement. Also, ever hear of Moscone or Milk. Hence the metal detectors.
It will take a bold leader in this City to realize we have a third world transportation system. Not building projects like this got us into this problem in the first place with supply and demand.
1st. Sheriff’s office / Police department it’s a moot point because it’s all SF taxpayer money.
2nd. Dan White crawled into City Hall through a basement window, shot and killed the Mayor.
So having officers watch the front door is about as useful to preventing political as doing rain dances are to ending droughts. Especially when can still get in through the basement….
We don’t need “bold leaders”. This isn’t some Hollywood movie where SF is going to be wiped out by an asteroid. We need people to do a good job driving the bus. 🙂
Didn’t Dan White crawl in through a window to kill the mayor and Milk?
2 lane Geary?? Sure good luck with that
Unfortunately the only way forward is to put the cart before the horse in our political climate. It is nearly impossible to get transit funding before the density to support transit is built. Check out the OAK-SF bay crossings. They’re at capacity and people are screaming for a solution. Still not enough voters are willing to open their wallets.
Which is an embarrassment if true. LA passed the $120 billion Measure M with 70% in favor. Why we can’t do the same is beyond me.
Five different counties. Orange County isn’t in Measure M.
The OAK-SF bay crossings are a great example.
They promised us a bridge retrofit for $1.5 billion. It cost $7+ billion. It opened 25 years after the Loma Preita earthquake. No one was ever prosecuted.
Look at BART. The Powell Street Station janitor makes $250k+ a year, and the station is perpetualy filthy. The new BART cars? Over 3 years late. Lastly BART gives its employees and their families free travel passes on its system for life — even after they retire. 3,000+ rides a day.
Yes we need improvements, yes we need to pay for them, but not opening your wallet to the MTC/ BATA/ BART kleptocracy is not selfish, it’s self preservation.
We need a district attorney with back bone.
Not sure if I believe the Powell St. BART janitor makes 250K but I agree many government jobs are overpaid and the pensions are a complete rip-off of the taxpayer. Trouble is the government employee unions own the state legislature and governor lock stock and barrel. Nothing will change. Now, with the new tax law, the state is worried that high income folks will leave the state, which they have been doing anyway, and it could impact tax revenue. There is talk already of new taxes to adjust for that potentiality. Mutterings about HSR and the money needed to complete it. It may not be there and options now could see it terminate in SJ or come up the East side of the Bay to save billions and billions. Reality hits home one would think but not so with the people running this state.
“BART janitor grossed $270K in pay and benefits last year…$162,000 in overtime pay”
The Globalization and World Cities index rates San Francisco as an Alpha-. For just US cities, that’s the same level as Washington DC and behind only Los Angeles (Alpha), Chicago (Alpha), and New York (Alpha++). It is in the same tier as cities like Dublin, Melbourne, Zurich, Vienna, Taipei, Stockholm, Barcelona, and others.
Did you seriously just claim that SF doesn’t compare to Belgrade? Haha, good one…What is “world class” supposed to mean anyways, and how exactly might it apply to Belgrade, LA, and Chicago, but not SF?
Sorry, Belgrade?
I won’t be able to get a table at my favorite Chinese restaurant!
I think the Jordan Park neighborhood group fought the Goldman Institute project at the Coronet site for being too tall. They’ll probably oppose this project too.
Coincidentally, the Institute on Aging used to be in this very building before they built their new home.
i used to live next to HAPS on Hayes. This is super sad, they provide an amazing service.
I agree, I’ve used their services. HAPS is a great resource and we need more of it, not less.
TOD = 1:1 parking along a transit corridor?
Did you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
People who can afford a unit in any new building in San Francisco can afford — and have — a car if nothing else for large item shopping and road trips. However, very few of them will drive into downtown San Francisco from the 3300 block of Geary. The buses are plenty attractive and with the Red lanes, faster than driving anyway.
I don’t think the new building would be out of scale nor inappropriate for Geary, *but*, I do mourn the loss of what seems to be a nice Art Deco building (and mature street trees), when there are so many, many more gawdawful buildings along Geary that should be torn down first.
The existing building, though apparently initially constructed in 1922, has been so extensively “remodeled” over the ensuing decades so that nothing even remotely “charming” remains. There’s definitely nothing “Art Deco” about it. Its a perfect candidate for replacement by a higher/better use.
The project is not using the State Density Bonus Law — it’s utilizing the local “HomeSF” program and is providing a higher percentage of on-site below-market-rate units in exchange for the increased density.
Good catch and since changed above.
While the project sponsor checked “YES” to the question, “Will the project include a request for density bonus under the State Density Bonus Law?” on Section 4 of the project’s preliminary application, they subsequently checked “No” to the question in Section 8 and “YES” to approval under HOME SF.
The proposed number of below market rate (“affordable”) units is 12 or roughly 30 percent of the total.
Geary will gradually add density AND public transportation. Plus there will be preservation. We are in the very early stages. Democracy is at work, a messy business no doubt, despite all of our criticisms.
No uglier than what is there now, and certainly needed. BTW Muni does not need one more dime. They need realistic wages and work rules, routes that are determined by demand, and accountable management.
This is exactly what I’ve been saying is needed for years. Line Geary and Third Ave with 6-10 floor buildings. Those transit-rich corridors are where San Francisco should be raising density to build more housing.
I assume you mean 3rd Street, not Avenue.
Geary will have a (bored, not cut and cover) subway within twenty years. Whether it’s a Muni project or the west end of a new BART crossing to SoMa, it will happen.