Plans for a 7-story building to rise up to 75 feet in height upon the St. Mark’s Square and Martin Luther Tower parking lot parcels which front Ellis Street, between Franklin and Gough, have been drawn.
As designed by Van Meter Williams Pollack for the John Stewart Company, the proposed Ella Rohlffs Place will yield 94 units of below market rate housing for seniors, with a mix of 19 studios and 75 one-bedroom apartments, a new community room and administrative space, and a landscaped courtyard which will connect Ella Rohlffs Place to the existing Martin Luther Tower at 1001 Franklin Street, the St. Mark’s Urban Life Center at 1101 Franklin and St. Mark’s Luther Church at 1111 O’Farrell to the north.
The sacred heart student parking lot?
Plans for redeveloping the parking lot parcel on the northeast corner of Ellis and Gough have yet to be drawn, or at least proposed. But we’ll note that the allowable height for said corner parcel, along with the adjacent parcel at hand, was actually reduced from 130 to 80 feet in height back in 80s, “to more closely reflect the Redevelopment Agency’s land use plan” for the Western Addition at the time.
Hope to see this project, and many more, come to fruition. In the immediate vicinity of this location are dozens of tents and dozens of people sleeping on the streets every single night – all in one of the wealthiest cities in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Housing construction is the main way out of this inequity.
UPDATE: Cathedral Hill Infill Building Closer to Reality