With permits to demolish the existing 3,600-square-foot home at 178 Sea Cliff Avenue and build a modern new 8,000-square-foot home on the site having survived a challenge, been approved and recently issued, plans to demolish the adjacent home at 170 Sea Cliff Avenue and build a similar, but slightly larger, new home on the neighboring lot have now emerged.
As designed by Mark Cavagnero Associates, the proposed three-level home to rise up to 40 feet in height on the 170 Sea Cliff parcel, which doesn’t include a new basement level, would yield around 8,500 square feet of conditioned space, with another 2,500 square feet of storage, parking and other unconditioned space, including an enclosed pool but not the expansive rear deck, roof deck and multiple balconies.
As with the now fully permitted home to rise next door, access to the underground garage for 170 Sea Cliff would be accessed by way of a hidden lift at the end of the shared curb cut/driveway.
And yes, the two homes would make for a rather spectacular compound, particularly as rendered. So be extra nice over the next couple of years, we’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.
Not a good use of the space, tbh. Would prefer a quad-plex on this site at minimum. We really need the density.
Maybe get familiar with the neighborhood.
Do the adjacents look like Section 8s?
No need to make snide comments about people in need … but yes, apartments here would be woefully out of place (and tied up in litigation by neighbors for years).
There is no place in San Francisco that suitably attractive apartments would be “woefully out of place.”
The OP didn’t propose a high density apartment complex, just a quad-plex. You can increase density without having apartment complexes that “would be woefully out of place” in areas like this one or targeted at folks that need Section 8 to be able to obtain housing.
In fact, most of the recent California laws greatly expanding homeowners’ rights to build accessory dwelling units on single-family properties were originally proposed with just such a situation as this one in mind. There are many, many people who would like to live in this neighborhood, but due to the SFH zoning that prevailed until recently, the available units were limited.
Densifying areas zoned for SFHs doesn’t have to be only for areas affordable for the middle class and I think it’s telling that folks who call for building our way out of the current housing crisis defend the current state of neighborhoods lived in by the uppermost 1% as somehow sacrosanct. Where are the YIMBY’s when we need them?
Pretty sure most YIMBYs would be happy to see dense housing in sea cliff and pacific heights and presidio heights and all the other tony parts of SF. If you want to find hypocrisy in the YIMBY movement, I suggest you look elsewhere.
YIMBY here. Not a member of the top 1%. I have no problem with a quad plex here.
Do you live in Sea Cliff? I’m tired of people supporting denser building in other people’s neighborhoods and calling themselves YIMBYs.
I live in Noe and would LOVE to see more buildings here. I’d love to see it in Sea Cliff too. I know I don’t live there, but since my cost of living is affected by the failure to build in Sea Cliff, I’m going to go ahead and express my preference in this case as well.
I do not live in Sea Cliff. I do not live in most neighborhoods in SF. I do, however, support building housing in every neighborhood in SF.
One does not have to live in a neighborhood to support building more housing there.
Sierrajeff,
Their comment was regarding the adjacent properties and a housing type (and never mentioned “people”).
While I understand the point you are trying to make, you should recognize that accuracy is important when making accusations!
Speaking of accuracy, “Section 8” is a voucher made available to specific people. It is not a type of building. Hence, the only sensical interpretation of your phrasing would be “a place that caters to *those* people”
First off, multi-family dwellings do not automatically equal “Section 8.” Second, there is actually a 12-unit apartment building at 195 25th Avenue in Sea Cliff.
Why not just merge the lots at this point? I sort of expect that a single buyer is just going to buy both and figure out how to join them… Or maybe use one as a guest house?
At this time of year, when we’re needlessly bothered by talk of wandering woodworkers, and everyone seems to have their hand out, I can’t tell you how much this warms my heart.
I mean I literally can’t find the words.
Wasn’t 178 Sea Cliff sold in 2015? It’s been 7 years? And the owner is doubling down? I gotta say, that’s commitment.
Does the house next door have a indoor and an outdoor pool?
I see the reflective floor, which makes it look like water. But when I zoom in, there is a basketball net on the wall. My inference is that it’s a sport court of some kind.
Ah. Thanks!
My Own Private Salk Institute
Cold, sterile, and ugly. Maybe they can market it as “brutalist” ?
There are plenty of up-scale people who would like to live in this neighborhood, who can afford it, who want a new, modern house, and who simply do not want to live in 8,000 square feet. Duplexes, triplexes, quadriplexes all would fit in, just as they do in so many other SF neighborhoods, and be virtually indistinguishable from a single-family house.
This street is entirely appropriate for global luxury-class mansions.
I hope the owners build and enjoy these planned homes.
The differentiation between large houses and apartments is not really all that great. Rich people living in big houses often fill the extra bedrooms with family and friends and visitors. The result is occupation patters similar to small apartment buildings.
Almost looks like low rise office building from the street. Design doesn’t fit in with the block.
The Beaux Arts majesty of city hall doesn’t fit in with its own block either.
Conformity is a poor, if often used, metric to evaluate real estate design.
Architect website if full of commercial and institutional projects, not much single family residential.
Cold sterile and ugly. Maybe they can market it as “brutalist”.
Terrific neighborhood if you enjoy being close to never-ending building projects.
So are most neighborhoods in the Bay Area.
Disgusting. No one needs 8k sf.
Make rich people pay taxes again.
I am all for rich, the merely affluent (aka upper-middle class), and the middle-class paying more taxes, but I laugh quite a bit at the hysterics over these homes! There are far larger homes in the surrounding neighborhood and quite a few have been there for generations. And, guess what? Even when tax rates were much higher, rich people still built and bought large fancy homes.
It is interesting to read between the lines with these outraged comments and see that the true desire is not to feed the hungry or shelter the unhoused, but to try to prevent a few people from having nicer homes than you do. It is a bit weird.
Instead of worrying about grand mansions being built next to other older grand mansions, I would think we should focus our time, energy and resources on building affordable housing for the working poor and the unhoused and properly funding education and healthcare.
I don’t care if someone’s house is bigger than mine. What I care about is the ongoing assault of casino crapitalism and the consequent defunding and deterioration of the commonweal. As this continues, the U.S. will looking more like South Africa, with a tiny minority living in gated and gilded bunkers while the rest of us live in the ash heaps. But in the U.S. as long as the rich people are catered to, it’s all good, right?
Dinner at Nightbird is a far more offensive waste of resources than a house that will last 100 years, in my opinion.
For anyone unfamiliar, Nightbird is the politically-correct San Francisco-take on London’s Bacchanalia restaurant, a review of which featured in today’s New York Times.
Looks like it’s time to turn Sea Cliff into a historic district.