San Francisco's pseudo-suburban neighborhoods are on edge as ever-increasingly dense and tall developments are being proposed, and the latest is a proposed apartment tower in West Portal that just almost tripled in size.
The fight over the Marina Safeway redevelopment is likely to rage on for some time, and battles over upzoning will likely characterize the bulk of the next decade in the outer Avenues. But now we have another likely fight brewing in quaint and sleepy West Portal, where a proposed development that began this year as a 64-unit building has now grown almost threefold to 172 units, and grown upward from nine stories to 12.
This is the proposed apartment complex we first heard about in January that would replace the former Empire Theater at 85 West Portal Avenue, most recently known as CineArts at the Empire, which has been closed since early 2021.
As the Chronicle reports today, the developer is seeking to enlarge the project partly because of Mayor Daniel Lurie's so-called "Family Zoning" changes, and after they acquired an adjacent property at 61 West Portal Avenue — currently home to Goodwill and Supercuts. And this 12-story complex, which will dwarf everything surrounding it by nine or ten stories, is all but guaranteed to cause a war in the neighborhood.
"People are going to lose their minds," predicts Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who tells the Chronicle she nonetheless supports the project and upzoning in general. “This is going to be my Marina Safeway."
The developer is DM Development, and something called Empire West Portal LLC, and DM's Mark MacDonald tells the Chronicle that he hopes to "bring a very high level of quality and finishes" to the project, at a "very important and prominent West Portal location."
The LLC was founded by the fifth-generation owner of the property, Jesse Appleton, who tells the paper, "As a family we are excited to take the project to the next stage and excited to be part of the community and continue that legacy."
DM Development is hoping to take advantage of the state's density-bonus law, reserving 15% of the project's units — 26 in total — as below-market-rate, half of which will be allocated for "very low income" tenants. Melgar tells the Chronicle this in itself should be seen as a win for the community, because the city has lowered its affordable requirement to 5% in order to encourage more development.
This new addition to West Portal would also include 70,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space — enough for a full-service grocery store.
Much like with the Marina Safeway project, the developer is hoping to speed through the city approvals process without any public hearings or votes. Residents and neighborhood groups are more than likely going to lawyer up, though, as they have in the Marina, where the latest gambit there to bring the developer to the negotiating table has to do with ground contamination from a long-ago steam-power plant on the site that used crude oil. Neighbors have also argued that the state's fast-track density bonus shouldn't apply to the site because it is not primarily surrounded by "urban uses," in that it borders a yacht harbor, Fort Mason, and Marina Green.
Melgar tells the Chronicle that she also expects pushback from neighborhood merchants about the noise and street disruption that will come with approximately two years of construction. But, she adds, those merchants should be happy having hundreds of new residents on the block once it's done.
Related: Opponents Say Proposed 25-Story Marina Safeway Project May Not Be Eligible For Fast-Tracking
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