Eastwood Development stymied by fire hydrant on SF’s Potrero Hill

Eastwood Development has spent three years and $20 million to nearly complete nine homes on San Francisco’s Potrero Hill — and is held up by a single fire hydrant.

The locally based developer led by Lucas Eastwood is close to losing it all over the lack of a city hydrant at 939 Kansas Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The city won’t permit the infrastructure to put one in.

 “This should have just stayed a grassy hill,” a frustrated Eastwood told the newspaper.

Eastwood bought the entitled lot in 2019 for $7.5 million in what was supposed to have been a plug-and-play project.

But after nearly completing four duplexes and a townhouse with glass atriums, roof terraces and sweeping views of the city, the developer can’t plug into a needed fire hydrant. 

The issue: new homes must be within 500 feet of a fire hydrant, and within 100 feet of the connection for which the city’s Fire Department can pump water into the sprinkler system of a building. The building site has neither. There’s no easy fix.

And Eastwood, facing the possibility the 22,000-square-foot project will be seized by his lenders before the year is out.

The problem stems from a lack of water pressure on the street, even for the fire hydrants down the block. The developer was told his project must have a hydrant that can put out 1,000 gallons of water per minute. Nearby hydrants put out 350 gallons per minute. 

The local water main won’t support the hydrant he needs – with no way to hook into nearby lines. He says the city won’t give him permits for any infrastructure work — which could cost between $2 million and $3 million — to link up to a water main three blocks away.

Without it, he’ll have to tear down the homes.

“They just cannot figure out how to get it permitted,” Eastwood told the Business Times. “The infrastructure project is still stuck in that decision matrix which is San Francisco of all these siloed-off approvals, departments not talking to each other, not working together,” he said. 

“We’re ready to either sell or rent these units, and cannot get any momentum at all with the city — even to do this major public infrastructure upgrade on behalf of the city.”

Why the site was approved for development without code-compliant infrastructure, or why Eastwood was allowed to begin construction, isn’t clear.

To the city, infamous for its glacial housing permits, the hydrant issue is Eastman’s problem. The San Francisco Fire Department, Public Utilities Commission and the Mayor’s Office lay the blame on Eastwood. 

The developer said that Ken Cofflin, the fire marshall, told him, “Well, that’s not my problem.”

“Developers are responsible for ensuring that their new developments have the water infrastructure needed to supply the new project, including fire safety requirements, and do not affect water supplies to existing buildings,” a Fire Department spokesperson told the Business Times. “If upgrades are necessary because of a development project, that’s the responsibility of the developer.” 

— Dana Bartholomew

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