San Francisco Officials Approve Condos on Market Street

San Francisco officials gave final approval to a condominium project planned for a long-entitled Market Street development site.

Property owner Keller Grover secured the city’s approval for a 23-story, 201-unit condominium tower on the site of a historic Mission Revival building at 1965 Market Street, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The entitled property is now expected to be listed for sale, with brokers betting it could establish a new benchmark for development sites approved under California’s expanded housing laws.

“It will be a barometer of what is going on because it’s the first project going on the market that was approved under all the new state laws — there are zero land comps,” broker and developer Chris Foley, who worked with Keller Grover to shepherd the project through the approval process, told the Chronicle. “… [It’s] designed to actually get built.”

The project has evolved over the past decade. What began as a proposal for a seven-story, 96-unit building in 2015 ultimately grew into a 23-story tower by taking advantage of successive state density bonus measures as well as Senate Bill 423, the state’s housing approval streamlining law. The approved project includes 28 affordable units reserved for households earning less than 50 percent of the area’s median income, or $100,400 for a one-person household.

Rather than demolish the existing structure, the plans incorporate the historic building into the new tower. The former mortuary, which later housed the nation’s first LGBTQ+-owned bank before becoming office and retail space, will serve as the condo building’s lobby and amenities entrance. Portions of the existing structure, including its roof, will be repurposed as shared amenity space.

The approval will add more housing capacity to the corner of Market and Duboce Streets. Construction is slated to begin across Duboce Street on a 15-story, 187-unit affordable housing project, creating a cluster of new residential development along a stretch of Market Street that has seen little ground-up activity since the pandemic.

The City of San Francisco is required by state law to plan for 82,069 new housing units in the next five years, with more than half of those being affordable.

— Chris Malone Méndez