While San Franciscans fight desperately for more housing in some neighborhoods, an entire Portola District city block zoned for development has languished for roughly two years on the market. Socketsite reports that there's even a new lower price tag — $10 million, down from $12 million, for the parcel of land. Shall we start the bidding?
The 2.2 acre block is bounded by Woolsey, Hamilton, Wayland and Bowdoin Streets and is owned by the Garibaldi family. 770 Woolsey Street, as it's known, is these days the site of decaying greenhouses from the family's old University Mound Nursery. You can read more about that here, in a check in Curbed did a couple years back when the land hit the market.
The parcel is zoned for the development of about 34 single-family homes 40 feet tall. And, if a Conditional Use Permit for a planned development on the site were approved by the City, twice as many units could be potentially developed on the parcel.
However, at least to begin with, neighbors wanted something green, not something residential. Some formed a campaign called The Greenhouse Project in hopes of restoring the greenhouses and establishing a community park of a sort after co-purchasing the parcel with the Public Utilities Commission.
Still, a broker is set on development and the city desperately needs housing! and that's likely what will go down. But until somebody buys, the former University Mound Nursery will continue to lay fallow.
