Plans to raze the two-story, 15,000-square-foot office building at 1460-1462 Pine Street are in the works. And as proposed, a 9-story building designed by RG-Architecture would rise up to 85 feet in height on the Polk Gulch site.

As proposed, the 1462 Pine Street project would yield 104 residential units, a mix of 18 studios, 41 one-bedrooms and 45 twos, with a basement garage for 30 cars and 101 bikes, leveraging a State Density Bonus to build over the existing 65-foot height limit for the site and increase the allowable density by 50 percent.

Both demolition and building permits for the project have already been requested. And as always, we’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

13 thoughts on “Plans for Another Big Polk Gulch Infill Project on the Boards”
  1. The renderings look great. This will be a great win for the somewhat beleaguered neighborhood– lots of homelessness and drug abuse in lower polk.

    Also: what would it take to make Pine + bush a bit less like traffic sewers. Remove a lane (even the rush hour only lanes, which are quite harrowing) and transform the street life of buildings on blocks like this.

    1. Realistically it would take a Geary subway to make the west side less car dependent, but I’m not sure I see that happening in my lifetime.

      1. SF doesn’t know how to link transit development with improvements to streetscape (see: Subway, Central). We have launch many major transit projects in recent years but not removed any traffic lanes. Would love to see this as a quid pro quo, especially with all that housing landing on the west side in theory.

        1. Disagree with this. Lots of lanes have been removed in recent years, mostly in SOMA. Fell, South Van Ness, Valencia, Cesar Chavez etc.

        1. Eliminating a lane could effectively slow traffic while maintaining flow–see Cesar Chavez for a great success in this regard. Slowing traffic on these major thoroughfares would do wonders in terms of safety and livability.

          1. In theory. In reality, turning driving into an obstacle course leads to reckless driving.

          2. Agree with Daniel. I see a lot more errant driver behavior when arterials don’t function as such – things like speeding to catch a light, swerving to change lanes, etc. Pine and Bush function remarkably well and, well, I’m sorry but not every street in one of the densest cities in North America can be a woonerf.

            (And note that this doesn’t just benefit drivers – Pine and Bush are major Muni cross-town routes for express busses. “Calm” Pine and Bush, and you make the already egregiously long Muni bus commutes even longer.)

          3. Express busses have been idled– they have not run since Muni changed their schedules at the beginning of Covid.

            I would argue – as evidenced by the high injury network map – that the arterials are the most dangerous roads in San Francisco.

            I am all for dedicated bus lanes and making it easy to navigate the city on public transit. Let’s do that (restore the express busses), but let’s ALSO make our arterials safer by removing lanes + other safety measures.

  2. Is the developer JS Sullivan? Based on the infill location and architect selection I am guessing so. They have a good track record of seeing projects through to completion.

  3. A great improvement to the dark, empty stretch between Polk Street and the post office at Larkin Street. Will make a big difference in the neighborhood.

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