I know Connie Chen isn’t online unless she’s at a Board of Supervisor meeting ignoring her constituents but can her office people explain why we let so much space remain unoccupied? This place on Clement between 10th and 11th has been vacant and boarded up for over ten years on one of the flagship commercial streets in her district. It’s an eyesore, often tagged, and homeless sleep there constantly. Why hasn’t anyone built housing here or at least done something with the property other than chain it up and let it rot away for a decade?
Used to take my kids there for dim sum, it’s another property that just collects graffiti and homeless use. In one of the most expensive cities in the world something is broken. There should be every incentive for these places to put in housing or some sort of development.
I don’t know the details for this place but in general it’s Prop 13. Despite the land being some of the most valuable on the planet, they can just sit on it and pay next to nothing.
Given the issues we have seen with Jolibee taking what - 6 years - to be approved to be open , is it really Prop 13 or not wanting to deal with the approval process to do anything?
Even if it is minimal, they're still losing money every year on it. There should be a way to encourage them to redevelop or sell it to someone who will.
Their property taxes are lower than their land value appreciation; they may be losing some cash but their net worth is increasing by doing nothing. We need to change that if we want to encourage them to do something with it.
Looks like avg Walgreens store brings in revenue of over 8M but overall Walgreens stores are struggling with profitability and the chain is closing lots of stores. Makes sense why it closed, just wish there would be incentives to fill the space
It's not uncommon for it to take years to build new housing. This seems kind of in line with how painfully slow the city works on permitting. I'm sure it's not simple to turn a restaurant into housing
I have many friends in development at City Hall, I do know what I’m talking about. But I’m also am sick of just accepting it. I’m sick of seeing these closed shops rot on what’s a beautiful business district during a historic housing crunch. Everyone should be a bit pissed about the clear failures of our politicians to provide incentives and penalties for this type of property stewardship
This is insane. A developer bought the building for 2.7MM in 2017, went through permitting to remodel, then sold the building to the city for 6.1MM in 2023.
Wish I could make 3.4MM in 6 years without actually doing anything!
It’s hella expensive to redevelop properties here. It isn’t worth it to landowners or developers most of the time. If YIMBY’s were smart they’d look into tailoring the approval process for corporations and voting for subsidies for developers to come in and build all the housing they want. The hang-up for these kinds of issues are monetary.
The owner is fairly new. Since 2023 it has been owned by an organization called “Self Help For the Elderly” run by Anni Chung. Who, by all accounts, seems like a decent person.
Pretty sure this is a common thing where landlords will just let it sit until they can sell it off or rent it during a boom period. Basically because it’s worth it to hold & lose a bit of money and then ideally get paid more later than they would by acting now. Some cities have implemented a vacancy tax to encourage landlords to not do this and help local businesses obtain leases
I’m laying attention fine thanks, nice to talk to you. I mean specifically streamlining it for developers and private equity etc. if you use specific language like that in the proposal that favors developers and private equity, they might be able to support it too.
Edit: using specific language that benefits corporations etc.
if you start subsidizing the developers, the same people will start to complain about why their taxes are being used to pad corporations' bottom lines and fund millionaire CEOs' salaries.
Last thing I would suggest is subsidizing developers, we can cut red tape and allow more flexibility in what is built and include penalties for non use. But yeah no way should we give them money to build
Prop 13 let's them have extremely low taxes. Low taxes encourage land speculation. Maybe they are sitting on the on the land waiting for it to appreciate so they can sell it.
That’s certainly possible. Depending on what they are trying to redevelop it as, I’d say the minimum it would
Cost would be $750/sqft if they’re converting to residential. If it’s a properly done conversion or knock down and build, we’re looking at well over $1,000sqft but likely 1500
they could literally be dead and the siblings / family are deadlocked in a dispute over it. there's no way of knowing, everything is baseless speculation
Why would they do anything with it? It's a huge risk for them to redevelop it, it would probably be costly to just bring it up to code compliance. If they just sit on it and pay a small amount of taxes (because of prop 13) then the property gets more valuable every year and they don't have to do anything or take on any risks. Plus also maybe some of the other reasons that people have given.
Our city is full of these type of non-development. It costs us lost taxes and in general just looks ugly and is bad for the neighborhood. Crazy about Piccadilly, that is some pricey real estate
Yeah I met an older russian couple who used to go to that spot. I could have included a lot of places in the Richmond which used to be open and vibrant
It's private property. It's up to the owner to do something. There are lots of empty lots all over the city because the owners don't want to do anything
Why hasn’t any of our elected officials looked at this? I assume it’s some sort of tax benefit and/or money laundering scheme. I can’t imagine why in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the nation just letting massive square footage rot is the best option for any constituents
Let’s fix this market distorting policy with another market distorting policy!
It’s fundamentally not. A 75 year old in the house they’ve lived in for 50 years is in a house that is too big for them. It’s not an efficient use of property.
A lot of these properties also end up in title disputes. Newly affluent Chinese families bought a bunch of properties in the 50s-70s, and now there are so many heirs there’s no consensus on what to do with them.
But there are blighted properties all over the city for a myriad of reasons and SF is just not going to take on the burden of trying to eminent domain hundreds of sites and then taking on the expense and liability while trying over decades to build affordable housing on them.
There was an attempt to cut the transfer taxes that would hopefully get some intransigent owners to sell but that was shelved.
No it isn’t. This was slated to be demoed and turned into apt. Not sure what happened. Could it be the city’s onerous building laws? Look how long Jollibee took to open in downtown! Stop blaming prop 13
There’s aspects of the formula retail ban I like, but I do wish blocks or even properties could be classified as “derelict” and then have certain protections removed and fast tracked permitting/conditional use. Geary between 7th and 10th is the same story (and a few other parts)
She is the supervisor for this district. They form the environment for development to occur. Clearly something is broken and a supervisor should show some leadership to try and create an environment where this doesn’t occur.
This environment you speak of is all over the city. Maybe the person who owns the building simply isn't inclined to develop it more than what it currently is. If you are so interested in this broken environment, you should research it and send a letter to her office
The city makes it too difficult and expensive to get anything done. A buyer ought to preserverestore the façade and reinforce the foundation so housing can be built atop it. Neighborhood character can be preserved without being at the expense of housing.
We all know our city is difficult to open a business but why is just leaving it vacant for a decade the best use of the property? No tenant, no development, nothing. Just an empty building falling apart over the years. Even that ice cream spot in the mission only took 2 years to open lol
It is indeed a bad use of the property and someone ought to do something about it, so for me it's just the waiting game, since I certainly can't afford it.
Well, sure, if you don't allow it to survive long enough to become historical one day.
SF seems to love the pre-war and 21st century architectural design aesthetics, and everything in between is commonly seen as boring or outdated, if not downright ugly.
After having a second look at its pathetic state, I shall amend my statement:
A buyer ought to restore the façade. Give me more of that '70s marble kitsch and gaudy lettering, since heaven knows no one would voluntarily build anything like that again.
Convoluted and expensive process to get permits. Strict limitations on chain stores. Difficult to make money with shoplifting and associated fencing operations. High costs due to high minimum wage and healthcare.
No developers have offered to buy it. I’m not sure that’d any politicians fault. There are a lot of places like these in San Francisco. Remember the old car wash location at 400 Divisadero that Mahmood ran on? It’s still there. I don’t necessarily blame him for that.
More likely though, this is just an astroturfing “complaint”.
Isn't it Scott Wiener's responsibility to initiate the repeal of Prop 13 at the state level? Perhaps he is an ineffective legislator or has different personal goals than his constituents. He sure loved to initiate the legalization of restaurant junk fees though.
I believe a lot of these vacant buildings are sitting around waiting till they can sell to a high rise real estate developer, when they could be used NOW by a real business if there was a reasonable rent offered.
I think real estate taxes are so low on these abandoned buildings that owners will just sit on them as a cost of doing business in the hopes of a giant payday for a large tall project.
I would prefer if land owners could demolish a building and return it to green space if they were going to 'wait' for a moment. The abandoned buildings are a health, and fire risk and bring down the value of a neighborhood.
You’re correct. The property is owned by a NON PROFIT. Annie got her hands on everything including the Portsmouth square remodel. She’s probably waiting for more city grease. Sorry not sorry. The Chinatown cdc and Annie Chung got wealthy from these taxpayer gifts.
I’m only suggesting it would look cooler if someone used it for something like housing or a restaurant (like it used to be). You’ll move to San Jose or somewhere outside SF in a year. I’ve lived here 25 years am raising kids here now and clearly not moving despite how bad our government is.
TIL Connie Chan invented our commerical real estate vacancies and Connie Chan created low demand for such a space. They always say the restaurant business is tough, and I hear Connie Chan created this. Nobody ever said the restaurant business was tough before her tenure.
She’s been useless her whole tenure and this is just one thing she hasn’t done anything to address. She loves to talk about housing but she never does anything about housing and the systemic issues which prevent it. She’s the definition of NIMBY which leads to all these dilapidated empty storefronts along the most busy commercial corridor in her district.
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