An adaptive reuse project involving a historic building in Pacific Heights, which will add 24 units of housing to the neighborhood, is looking at a 20-percent uptick in construction costs and a two-year delay because of legal challenges from a single next-door neighbor.

The project at 2395 Sacramento Street involves the partial preservation and reuse of the historic Lane Medical Library building at Webster and Sacramento streets — formerly part of Cooper Medical College, which became part of Stanford Medical School in 1908. The 1912 Classical Revival building was designed by master architect Albert Pissis to house the 30,000-volume medical library of the former Cooper Medical College, and the private library became the largest medical library west of Chicago.

It later became the California Pacific Medical Center Health Sciences Library until 2017, and the property was then sold to developer March Capital in 2021. The company has gone about getting signoff from San Francisco planners and the Board of Supervisors for its plans to preserve the facades of the historic building as well as portions of the interior, and to build 24 units of housing in and around it, rising a total of six and seven stories in two towers — with the shorter of the two about the same height as the existing building.

A single neighbor who lives to the west of the project, Jonathan Clark, appealed the project's approvals to the Board of Supervisors, and that appeal was shot down in a 10-1 vote in February. But now, as the Chronicle reports, Clark and his attorney are appealing to the state using CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act — a common tactic of anti-development NIMBYs — claiming that the city illegally used a  broader environmental review, not a project-specific one, to sign off on the project.

An attorney for Clrark, Richard Drury, tells the paper, "If this [project] were to be allowed, no residential project would ever have to do project level [environmental review] in the city of San Francisco ever again."

But developer Bora Ozturk, the principal of March Capital, suggests that this fight is just symptomatic of the development obstacles that have long plagued San Francisco, with such appeals able to derail and delay major projects for years, tying up capital that developers were would rather be reinvesting more quickly.

Ozturk tells the Chronicle this is his firm's last project in San Francisco, even though they are based here. March Capital has projects in the pipeline in Houston, Salt Lake City, Austin, and Boise, and Ozturk suggests that it takes five times as long to get a project built and sold here than it does in Houston — allowing money to be reinvested five times in ten years, rather than twice.

"You get outside of California and generally the tone of the conversation is, ‘What concessions would you guys like?'" Ozturk tells the paper. "There is always an incentive to build more, and a friendly attitude aimed at reducing the timeline."

Ozturk further suggests that San Francisco will struggle to meet its housing goals primarily because banks are spooked about lending money here.

"Capital goes where it’s welcome,” he tells the Chronicle. "Here it is not welcome right now."

Ozturk also noted that Clark is likely being self-serving about what he doesn't want to look at out his window, vis a vis this project and the legal challenges. He has, allegedly, privately offered to drop his appeal if the developer lops a couple stories off the height of the project, and moves the parking entrance away from where he lives, per the Chronicle.

In rejecting Clark's appeal of the project in February, Supervisor Catherine Stefani, who represents the neighborhood, suggested that the vote could be an opportunity for the Board of Supervisor to show its seriousness about achieving the goals of its recently approved Housing Element, and "a chance to affirm our commitment to the policies we passed."

"We have a chance to say yes to a housing project that unanimously passed the Planning Commission and the Historic Preservation Commission," Stefani said, per the Chronicle at the time.

The sole holdout on the board in that 10-1 vote was Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.

Still, March Capital is committed to getting this project built, even if it does take two extra years and much more money spent. They will just need to deal with a state court first, and one of many, many CEQA lawsuits that have held up SF development for decades.