A long-awaited, long-delayed, enormous residential development in the southeastern corner of San Francisco — and across the county line in Brisbane — has finally gotten a start date. The Baylands development, which will straddle the two localities and ultimately include nearly 3,900 condo and rental units, will break ground on its first phase next June.

The project, which will represent a significant step in closing the gap toward SF's housing goals, has been in the works for a decade, with an original plan to redevelop the area around the defunct Schlage Lock Factory site in Visitacion Valley dating back to the days of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA), which folded in 2011. And a scuffle over plans to develop housing the adjacent former landfill site in Brisbane led to calls by the SF Board of Supervisors in 2016 to annex the entire town if it failed to build housing there.

As the Chronicle reports, Phase One of the 675-acre development, which includes a grocery store and 574 dwelling units, is set to begin on the Schlage Factory site. The rest of the construction, which will include 1,674 units on the SF side and another 2,200 units on the Brisbane side, along with 140 acres of green space, will proceed over the next 10 to 15 years, according to the developer, Universal Paragon. The developer also plans to rehab the old Schlage building to create its new headquarters.

The factory shut down in 1999 and the property has been vacant ever since. Universal Paragon acquired the property thereafter, along with the Baylands landfill site, and has held on to both for years as this project took shape. The loss of the funding that would have come from the SFRA meant that the developer had to seek funding elsewhere.

As of last year, as Universal Paragon told the SF Business Times, the plan was to start construction in the first quarter of this year, but that clearly didn't happen.

Mayor London Breed says she's doing everything in her power to keep the project moving forward, and she adds in a statement that Visitacion Valley residents "deserve to see shovels in the ground, new homes built, and new businesses opening as soon as possible."