The muted plans to refurbish the shell of the Mission District garage at 3140-3150 16th Street and convert the historic structure into four “Design Professional” spaces, a designation which would exclude any restaurant, retail or residential uses, have been put on hold.  And the building is now back on the market without any plans for the site having been approved.

Purchased for a record-setting $8.7 million back in 2013, Mx3 Ventures was planning to build condos on the site, plans which were first downsized and then abandoned.  Plans to convert the building into a 20,000-square-foot restaurant and event space were subsequently abandoned as well.

And with plans to offload the property to a private elementary school having fallen through, and no buyers when the property was then listed with an $11 million price tag early last year, the property has been listed anew without a designated list price and remains available for lease as well.

We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

54 thoughts on “Historic Mission District Garage Back on the Market, Again”
  1. We’re probably all on the same page here and believe the best use for this property is more empty and obsolete luxury covid coliving SRO dorms for coder arrivistes on top with self-driving “creative” office space for disruptive symbol manipulators down. Maybe a boba tea kiosk/e-scooter dock in the corner?

    If I sound like a broken record, it’s because SF real estate is a broken record (double entendre noted).

    1. I would prefer it be used as a city sponsored rehab for mandatory treatment of addicts who keep filtering through the system.

      1. Too pricey a location for that! This is a Main St. in a Business District + folks go here to Eat, Drink and Relax!

        1. would you rather the large number of addicts currently on the street be inside getting treatment or outside getting high and stealing (as they currently are)?

    2. Rent is still too damn high and there are still plenty of people who could afford to move into luxury lofts at a lower price point. So keep them empty luxury apartments coming. Who knows, it might just drag market rate housing down to the price where the middle class would actually be able to move back into SF. But of course we would never do a silly thing like that: this building is “historic”. Looks like an ugly garage to me.

      1. Ah, yes, the ol’ build more luxury units to make lower-tier housing more affordable canard. Sorry, but a proliferation of empty luxury units doesn’t magically make lower-tier housing more affordable. As is clearly obvious right now, with thousands of units (including units not covered by rent control), many owners will simply take their units off the market rather than allow additional supply to come to market. Only a sufficient amount of lower-tier housing and landlords willing (or compelled) to rent at lower prices than they previously felt entitled to will put downward pressure on prices.

        Adding luxury units to that block will have the owners of nearby SROs and rundown apartments thinking their property must now be worth much more. It’s called “gentrification” and it only and always makes all housing in a given neighborhood more expensive.

        Prices in that area are gradually reverting to pre-bubble prices, but it is a slow process. Adding luxury units to that block will slow down price moderation, and possibly reverse it. If your goal is higher rents, than your support of high-end housing there would make sense.

        1. Agreed, two beers. NIMBYS are tedious, but so are these YIMBYS that think luxury housing overdevelopment is going to “trickle down” like so much bad Reaganomics.

          1. This is a straw man. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone that describes themselves as a YIMBY that thinks building ONLY market rate housing is the solution.

          1. That’s because whenever one notes that building more redundant “market rate” housing displacing jobs and affordable housing only benefits the bankerbuilderlandlordrealtor crowd, S&D is predictably invoked in response.

          2. This spot has zero jobs and zero housing. Any development at the site definitionally can’t directly displace anyone’s home or job. There’s nothing “redundant” about market rate housing either at this location, in the Mission, or across the city more broadly. There objectively isn’t enough of it. There also isn’t anywhere near enough BMR housing. Both of those things can be and are simultaneously true.

          3. The gentrification effect does displace working class jobs and makes housing more unaffordable.

            “There objectively isn’t enough of” market rate housing is nonsense, a value judgment. Not enough skytower luxury condos for speculation, money laundering, and AirBnB? If the objective is to fuel the largest asset bubble in history, than your claim would be true. But even now, thousands of vacant “market rate” units aren’t even being made available to market, because, apparently, there is too much of this market segment.

    3. SRO dorms sound great as we need more low priced, market rate units. Four bedroom units meant for families would be great, too. I’d love to move beyond buildings that are either studio, 1 or 2 BR and add more diversity to the housing stock.

      1. Look on zillow and c-list. The coder dorms are ghost towns, with prices plummeting, and they can’t give them away.

        Four bedroom units meant for families are obviously what we need, and there have been very few built over the last twenty-five years. Where’s the supply to meet that actual demand? No, apparently we need to build more empty luxury SROs for which there is no demand, zilch, nada. You guys can’t even get your S&D narrative straight anymore. Maybe a new, less socially-destructive narrative would help?

        1. Of course they can’t give them away. It’s a pandemic and those coder kids are at home with their parents or elsewhere. They’ll be back by the end of 2021 and demand for SRO dorms will return.

          1. Hate to break this to ya, but they arent coming back.

            11 months in and you don’t think the industry has irrevocably shifted, you’re not paying attention.

          2. Hate to break it to you, but the pandemic is still ongoing. This talking like you’re conversant with the future, regarding an unprecedented black swan event, is silly styles. Say SF is over if you want to. Say 25 – 34 year olds who would be better served being in an office once, twice, thrice a week as opposed to daily will never come back. Go ahead and say those things. But they’re not anything you can really back up.

          3. Ken, coder kids want to party, date, have sex, and move up the corporate ladder. They’ll be back.

          4. Newsflash: Coder kids can have fun in Miami, Austin, Nashville, et al.

            Oh look, Salesforce is offering perm WFH now

          5. Man, Ken M, if you knew anything about Salesforce and its corporate culture you wouldn’t be stunting like that. Go ahead thinking people with career aspirations at Salesforce are permanently relocating elsewhere for WFH though. You already seem to have made up your mind. So what does it matter as you’ll seemingly continue to wrongly talk past people on here no matter how well they explain things to you anyway.

          6. I’ve said for a bit that I don’t think we are going to end up 100% remote, but there will be enough of a shift to remote/WFH to make a dent in the market. I got this data summary making the rounds on social media that has among other data a CEO survey about plans for future remote work: 15% planned to return to 100% in the office while 26% were planning for 75%-100% remote (with 30% planning up to 25% remote, 18% planning 25-50% remote and 12% planning 50-75% remote).

          7. Well, wilson, none of those numbers add up to 100 percent. Neither the people, nor the projected work work presence. Just sayin. But most folks are going to be coming in to work. Are they all in the suburbs? Few think that. Also, who are they anyway? 25-34 year old renters. It’s not a huge demographic and it’s highly mobile in the first place.

          8. 15 + 26 + 30 + 18 + 12 = 101.
            Rounding.
            I linked the original post, but it got pulled. If you Google “tracking the sf tech exodus” you can see the pie chart for yourself.

          9. “It’s not a huge demographic”

            Real estate moves at the margins.The margin drivers the last few years have been the coder kids and foreign capital flight. Demand from both has plunged.

            The margin has taken quite a hit.

          10. O rilly, real estate moves at the margins. Do tell. Come on now. I’ve only said that 700 million times on here.

            “The margin drivers the last few years have been the coder kids and foreign capital flight. Demand from both has plunged.”

            I challenge you to support that take with anything substantive.

          11. Ken M, you didn’t say anything you can back up, as has been shown, and doubling down with archness isn’t anything either. Have a great day.

          12. @Ohlone Californio – There’s been a lot of denial since this whole thing began, but you are really starting to veer into StopTheSteal territory these days. There’s dropping rents, increasing inventory, mail forwarding data, Uhaul data, cell phone tracking data, companies moving their HQ’s out, CEO surveys, companies creating plans and pay scales for remote work… Bloomberg just ran an article literally titled “Housing Prices Are Booming in U.S. Cities — Just Not San Francisco or New York.”

            Maybe we can all agree that all the coder kids are going to rush back into SOMA just the second after we finally uncover all that evidence of massive voter fraud. #PenceOhlone2024

          13. Right. When in doubt, go to the Trump card these days. heh.

            Dude. Please. People are saying SF is done, finito, over, kaput. “They arent coming back” (sic), etc etc.

            Baloney. Some people have left. The demographic seems to largely be 25-34 renters. The real estate market is inarguably bifurcated condos vs SFRs. SFRs are up, month in, month out.

            But you guys wanna say it’s a wrap. Fine, say it. It’s not true, but go ahead and say it. Save that lil Trump card for when it’s applicable tho.

          14. And by the way, Wilson, did you actually read that Bloomberg article you cite (name link)? If not take a moment and read it. Tell me what it is really doing. Is it really looking at San Francisco real estate prices? Because when I just read it I noted nothing whatsoever about San Francisco other than the header and the lede. I mean, literally zero content, other than one hyperlink to another article about rents sliding in SF and NY. It is sensationalist drivel. Surely you recognize that fact.

            So moving forward, please display critical thinking moving forward if you wish to go to the Trump card. Not just at me, and I despise Trump by the way. No but because even a moronic Trumpist would easily disembowel such cursory nonsense, as they’re smart enough to actually ostensibly used to dis them. Which you didn’t. So spare yourself the pain of spending all day feeling badly about yourself.

          15. Why was I not allowed to submit the link to the Bloomberg article?

            I mean, it’s relevant. This is a case in point of crap sensationalism giving people bad information. The freaking header is talking about SF, and SF isn’t even in the article. Yet this was picked up by all the other news sources, Google shows. Pitiful stuff.

            [Editor’s Note: You were (allowed to submit the link on your earlier comment), but it looks like you didn’t. But by all means, create another link to “crap sensationalism giving people bad information…[that] was picked up by all the other news sources” but we had ignored.]

          16. Because that story is about RE is starting to boom in cities outside of SF/NYC. People are starting to return to some urban centers but not others. There’s plenty of other stories/data about SF. Including the completely SF focused “Tracking The San Francisco Tech Exodus” I mentioned.

          17. People have busy lives these days. It’s bad form to make people work for their daily dose of unintentional irony. Why say ““crap sensationalism giving people bad information…[that] was picked up by all the other news sources” when you could just say “Fake News” and complain about the lamestream media conspiring against you in the very same post where you try and avoid comparisons to Trump.

          18. You can’t possibly be making an excuse for that article, Wilson? Can you? That header, that lede, that lack of anything whatsoever about SF itself?

            This is OK in your book?

            Who’s the Trumpy one now? That bait and switch is straight outta Fox News central casting.

          19. SF isn’t dying, although the model of destroying jobs that aren’t amenable to WFH and gentrifying working class neighborhoods out of affordability seems to be. IOW, your job might be dead. Moreover, the consequences of destroying jobs that turned out not to be amenable to WFH will hurt tax receipts for years to come,

            It turns out “creative” office work can be done anywhere, and those jobs don’t need to be in the most expensive city in the western hemisphere. Good job, real estate people, well done! I hear Austin and Miami are hot!hot!hot!…maybe those cities could use your, whatever it is that you do?

            Go wage your city-destroying class war somewhere else.

          20. You know what’s bad form? Citing an article you didn’t even read while trying to make a point.

          21. Two Beers, I read that twice and i don’t follow you at all. What, like I want prices to be super duper high so that normal folks can’t buy things, or something? No, I don’t. I want normal folks to be able to afford SF because normal folks are cooler than rich folks by and large, one, and two, I’d be plenty busy selling lots of average priced housing. At least I think that’s what you were getting at? Anyway …

          22. “Of course they can’t give them away.”
            “Indeed. That’s something, SOMA condos performance thus far during the pandemic. Not what I was getting at but fair enough.”
            “Hate to break it to you, but the pandemic is still ongoing.”

            In addition to the general point that there are plenty of other sources relating specifically to SF, you and others on this thread seem to have conceded the point of urban SF currently not doing well. You are correct that the pandemic is still ongoing, but the pandemic is still ongoing in other urban areas where RE now seems to be booming.

            Just like the fact that after 2 years have passed homes get 2 years older everywhere so you can’t use that to explain differential performance between areas. If in SOMA you “can’t give away” condos, while in other areas “condos and townhouses within stumbling distance of bars and restaurants are hot”, but the pandemic is still ongoing everywhere then you can’t really blame the differential in performance on the pandemic still being ongoing.

          23. Uber now reportedly trying to unload its palatial Chase Center HQ they never even moved into. But yeah, all is fine, Ohlone. Any disclaimers to attach to this latest bit of news, since the Salesforce WFH move didn’t move your needle (oddly) enough?

          24. I’ve made the point many times over that SF isn’t the only city experiencing residents leaving urbanity. I mean, many times.

            Your 2 years point remains something other than what I spoke about. Your scare quotes usage I don’t follow at all. My words, someone else’s words, words you choose to emphasize for some reason … all quotes? I don’t follow the way you use quotes whatsoever.

            The differential here in the pandemic is condos versus SFRs. I’ve said that a lot as well. I mean, anybody can get their head around why condos are less desirable these days.

            Ken M, right Uber. “All is fine” you fake quote me saying. Huh. I said we’re in a pandemic still, me.

            You guys are like every last internet cliche argue dudes, huh? straw men, fake quotes, topic changes, etc etc

          25. “I’ve made the point many times over that SF isn’t the only city experiencing residents leaving urbanity. I mean, many times.”

            But this is exactly why the Bloomberg article was relevant. Because it points to exactly the opposite of what you have been saying. If you want to argue that that article is part of a Fake News conspiracy against SF real estate, be my guest. But your “Gotcha” that the article was irrelevant or off topic is incorrect.

            Your 1st “Gotcha” regarding the mystery of why, for example, 3.6 + 3.6 + 2.8 = 10, yet after rounding to whole numbers gives you 4 + 4 + 3 = 11 also fell flat.

            You might need to look in the mirror when it comes to critical thinking and reading before posting.

          26. The Bloomberg article is headline as click bait. It’s like a step up from one of those “Shouldn’t have worn that ensemble to the airport! (you won’t believe what happens next!)”

            But back to “Historic Mission District Garage Back on the Market, Again” …

  2. I’m feeling schadenfreude because the seller here is obviously going to lose their shirt if and when this property sells. They are certainly not going to get $11M, they are probably not going to get $8M and they should thank their lucky stars if they get $7.5M.

    Gentrification in the Mission District can and should come to a pause for a few years, once this so-called “developer” takes a high-profile loss.

  3. So many afternoons spent from this exact viewpoint. Can’t say I miss it, but it’s nice to know there’s something recognizable left. RIP 16th St.

    1. The owner has the most expensive home in the Marina. He doesn’t even live in SF. I think he will be okay.

  4. This will remain as a garage that mechanics will pay to rent out and work on cars. It’ll be called WeWrench and peak at a $3.4B valuation

  5. Sorry, I just sold the bridge to the guy who got here right before you, but don’t go! You look like the kind of person who could use a “historic” garage.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *