Align’s Outer Richmond Safeway Plans Get Bigger

Align Real Estate is tweaking its plans to redevelop a Safeway grocery store in Outer Richmond.

The San Francisco-based developer filed a new application to replace the supermarket at 850 La Playa Street with residences and a new grocery store, San Francisco YIMBY reported. Albertsons Companies, Safeway’s parent company, owns the 3.3-acre site.

Align’s revamped plans call for an 85-foot-tall structure spanning a total of 820,000 square feet, including 520,600 square feet for housing, 79,750 square feet of retail and 179,900 square feet for parking. Both the residential and retail portions of the projects have increased in size, with the plans for a new 59,000-square-foot grocery store on the ground floor giving way to nearly 80,000 square feet of commercial space.

The proposal now calls for 562 residential units, up from previous plans for 526. Of those 562 units, 113 will be deed-restricted as affordable housing for residents earning between 50 percent and 80 percent of the area’s median income, or between $54,550 and $87,300 for one person. The unit mix will consist of 124 studios, 188 one-bedrooms, 192 two-bedrooms and 58 three-bedrooms. The application invokes Senate Bill 330 and the state’s density bonus law to increase residential capacity and streamline the approval process in exchange for affordable residences. Parking for 441 cars and 266 bicycles will be included.

Since last fall, Align Real Estate and Albertsons Companies have announced plans to redevelop six grocery stores in the Bay Area with residential components. Five Safeway locations in the region are slated to be replaced with new grocery stores and housing, while the sixth would raze the Trader Joe’s in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood and build a senior housing tower in its place, sans supermarket. In total, the effort is expected to generate more than 4,000 residences across the Bay Area, according to San Francisco YIMBY.

The estimated cost and construction timeline for the Outer Richmond project have not yet been unveiled.

— Chris Malone Méndez