Closed San Francisco Safeway Poised for Redevelopment

A shuttered Safeway in San Francisco’s Fillmore District could soon be the site of the city’s biggest new housing projects in years.

San Francisco-based developer Align Real Estate has filed plans to redevelop the grocery store and its parking lot at 1335 Webster Street with more than 1,800 housing units, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. It would triple the amount of housing built in the area over the past two decades.

The proposal, submitted on Monday to the city’s Planning Department, calls for a mix of mid- and high-rise towers as tall as 30 stories on the 4-acre site north of Alamo Square Park. About 15 percent of the units would be set aside for affordable housing, creating a “diverse mix of unit types, income levels and uses” for “an inclusive, mixed-income community” that would help meet state housing goals, the company said in a statement.

The plan also includes a 500-stall garage under one tower and a smaller, 20,000-square-foot grocery store to replace the Safeway, which closed last year after four decades due to what the company said were theft and safety issues.

Align Real Estate moved to buy the defunct Safeway location in 2022. The firm remains in contract to buy the property from the Pleasanton-based grocery chain; the sale is slated to close when construction starts on the sites. In the meantime, Align is talking with potential supermarket tenants after members of the community called for another grocery tenant to move into the 40,000-square-foot building at the site.

Earlier this year, Smart & Final submitted a bid to move into the abandoned Safeway building as part of a short-term lease that could be extended. It isn’t clear if discussions between Smart & Final and Align are still active.

Align is currently working to lock down the necessary financing to break ground once entitlements are secured. Align is also planning to file additional development applications in the coming weeks that call for the construction of more than 3,500 new homes across the city, of which about 500 will be affordable units.

As part of its housing element, the city of San Francisco must permit 82,069 new housing units by 2031.

— Chris Malone Méndez