The saga of 1049 Market Street continues this week as those new eviction notices we discussed a few weeks ago have been revoked by the landlord, clearly under pressure from the city.
Lawyers and advocates for the 40+ tenants who remain in the building (which has 75-80 units total, many renting for under $1,000) say that the latest round of eviction notices were illegal, and a spokesman for the Department of Building Inspection says that landlord John Gall "had no grounds whatsoever to go to the tenants," as the Examiner reports.
"We’re just trying to correct the violation," says Gall, who now seems trapped in a difficult situation. He has a block of 40 or so units that will require major reconstruction in the way of light wells in order to become legal dwelling units, however the city is pressuring him not to convert the building to office use, which was its original use, now that he has all the residential units on his hands and dozens of tenants he'd have to evict. He obviously wants to do office because it will require less expensive construction, and he'll be able to command top-dollar office rents in the quickly gentrifying mid-Market area.
As discussed earlier, he owns another building down the block at 1067 Market where he's likely to run into a similar problem with building inspection, and where another 70-100 people live, but that hasn't come up yet.
[Examiner]
