Plans to level the entire strip of commercial buildings on the south side of Ocean Avenue, between Capitol and Faxon Avenues, have been in the works since 2006, at which point a four-story development was envisioned to rise across the site and yield a total of 31 residential units over 23,500 square feet of new retail/restaurant space and an underground garage for 58 cars.
The 1649 Ocean Avenue parcel, upon which the old Bank of America building turned Chase Bank currently sits at the corner of Faxon, was subsequently carved out of the grand plans.
And having been briefly dusted off in 2009 but effectively lain dormant ever since, plans to raze the four buildings which stretch from 1601 Ocean (aka 1271 Capitol) to 1631 Ocean and redevelop the Ingleside site are now officially back in play.
And as proposed, the four-story development would rise to a height of 45 feet and yield 54 residential units (a mix of 6 studios, 27 one-bedrooms, 18 twos and 3 threes) over 5,900 square feet of new restaurant/retail space divided in four and a ground-level garage for 27 cars with its entrance on Capitol.
There are a few new developments around this area but not sure if those are completely leased out or sold out yet. Examples include the new building on Ocean and Miramar, and across the street from Whole Foods and McDonalds. Not sure what the neighborhood a block or two blocks over from Ocean is called but there are a bunch of older, somewhat dilapidated smaller single homes ripe for development.
Nevermind — from the google map, the neighborhood is Ingleside which I was referring to.
It’d be good to see a lot more of this scale development along the Ocean Ave corridor. This is a good relatively early step in that direction.
Or even—gasp!—6 to 10 stories on Ocean Ave. It’s already walkable and transit friendly.
That’d be fine with me as well. And if I can fantasize for a second, I’d love to see the K subwayed and extended under Geneva all the way to Bayshore.
This will be great for OMI. Wipe out the current small businesses and replace it with new very expensive rental space. Risk is how long can the builder or owner go with no rentals?
As for the residential units…we need more people in the neighborhood because we need to shut down Ocean Ave to cars. It should be for pedestrians only. We need Ocean Ave to stop being a thorough fare for people driving from 280. They should park their cars and walk home or take muni.
Sarcasm?
They are small, crappy businesses. If Ocean Ave can get enough decent businesses it won’t look like an Ave of crappiness. I like high-end businesses. They keep there storefront nice looking and have services a lot of people like – its how they got big. Versus crappy little businesses that just hang on and let their shops degrade.
As to the “thorough-fare” WTF. Its been that since, what the 1955 (when 280 got built). The difference is the city is changing around you. It’s getting denser. Its what cities do when they are vibrant. What is needed is better traffic control and transportation. I’m not a fan of the lights since they don’t have left turn signals and MUNI, as usual sucks…
The city is going to get denser…It will happen in your backyard. It’s better to work to make the best of it, than take useless stances about events and history.
Nothing you say is accurate. And your grammar skills are poor.
Wow so you don’t have a valid rebuttal so you resort to attacking one’s grammar. Pointless.
If you lived in Iowa you could walk a long time. From a 66 yr Native San Francisco resident.
Thank you!!! I almost got hit by a car twice this year already, not to mention to countless times I’ve witness others go through that.
Vanishing SF…
Yes, some might consider some of these shops “run down”, but they are part of the fabric of SF. If you like high-end move to Silicon Valley. too expensive? you know why? because it’s high-end, baby!
We need the funky hardware stores for grabbing duct tape, or batteries when you can’t make it to Costco/Home Depot/etc. People LIKE the restaurants and produce markets – if they don’t, they go out of business, not because they are pushed out by yet another frozen yogurt shop, or for God’s sakes yet another Poke restaurant.
These small shops are owned by people in the neighborhood, not some chain where the $ goes out of state- and the money stays in the neighborhood!
Unique shops make SF the vibrant, interesting, and fun city that it is- not having the same homogenized boutiques in every corner of the city.
“Make the best of it” is a lame ass attitude, I don’t know if “Karl” has lived here long, he sounds like he would prefer to live somewhere other than the OMI, bye Felicia.
P.S. – It’s “their”, not “there”
Saying “go from a more expensive place (SF) to a less expensive place (SV proper) in order to get a ‘higher end’ experience” is pretty logically inconsistent in this context.
The context is about the OMI, where having more high end stores, and new, expensive developments will only increase prices and rent in one of the last “reasonable” areas of the city. Missing the point is your perogative.
The Ave. is one of the last African-American-owned businesses in the area, and the block may be “funky,” but it’s very San Francisco and almost even charming. The replacement building could be anywhere. And it’s ugly. And they would only let chains rent the commercial spaces. Not that I am against density, but this project is yucky.
I’m glad to hear a shout-out to The Ave. I’ve watched games there with an almost equal mix of African-Americans, Asians and Caucasians. There are not that many places in SF or elsewhere you can do that. Far from crappy, but a neighborhood gem. @Karl – come down and check it out. I hope they can move to somewhere else on Ocean. There are a number of empty storefronts.
I’m all for local businesses, but honestly the rest of the block is kind of meh. More density actually creates more opportunity for local businesses.
Further down the street, there are a lot of people wondering what will be done with the El Rey.
I’ll second the shout-out for The Ave. It’s a solid local spot where people like Karl wouldn’t deign to go because of the paucity of “craft cocktails” and the like. I certainly hope they re-locate, because every neighborhood needs a good local bar where someone can stop in for a couple of drinks or watch a game.
Sure, lets not stop at 45 feet, why not go the way of the financial district 450 ft. Nothing like a good old wall of high rises to block the sun light. I can’t wait to wake up and sit in line to get to work on Ocean avenue, lets add another 5 to 10 minutes to the traffic, Especially with all the Handy cap ramps take up the parking and creating a driving hazard, on the first week they put them up a car or a motorcycle smashed into it, a self fulfilling prophecy. I don’t see the board of Stupidvisors riding bikes to work nor all the city employees, who created this mess call the Ocean Ave corridor. Look at the mess of traffic they created in front of Lick. If I wanted to live in a concrete corridor of ugly Modern buildings, I would have moved to the South of Market. Lets put up more barely discrete concrete bunkers. I guess keeping San Francisco old architecture doesn’t fit the Millennials lack of historical vision. An old cranky born and raised San Franciscan.
FYI: I’m kind of a neighbor to this property. We received a notice from the department of toxic substance control that environmental testing will be beginning for this project soon (there have been Dry Cleaners on this site, which often means poorly disposed chemicals). Seems like an indication that things are moving forward again. The building as proposed is not especially attractive (and it seems to take its design cues from other bland buildings built in the last 5-10 years around here), but this is a good place to build denser housing, and it’s nice to finally see progress.
There is also some new temporary construction work next to the Chase bank (where the BofA ATMs used to be).
There are few remaining businesses in the 1st floor spaces:
– Hot Yoga Studio.
– Spanish speaking storefront church (possibly, I haven’t seen a congregation here in a while)
– A hair salon that is almost always empty
– The Ave Bar.
The rest of the commercial space on the 1st floors is vacant/abandoned, and in most cases, has been for years.
It will be a shame to lose The Ave (and I hope they can move into either another vacant space in the hood, or into the new building when it’s built). There’s no shortage of other yoga studios and hair salons within a couple blocks, and there’s plenty of available storefront space.