Francis Scott Key Annex Site

The century-old Francis Scott Key Annex building, a former two-story school, sits on a nearly one and one-half acre parcel of land fronting 42nd and 43rd Avenue, between Irving and Judah Streets, in the Outer Sunset.

The building currently serves as an administrative office and storage for the San Francisco Unified School District, with weeds sprouting from cracks in the pavement which dominates the site.  And while the long-term use of the parcel is currently “being studied” by the SFUSD, neither a preliminary plan nor timeline has been established.

In the meantime, San Francisco’s Planning Department has been working with the community on designs for a temporary “Pavement to Parks” installation on the site, the preliminary concept for which includes a play area for children, quiet areas for seniors, gardens, and spaces for art and local businesses.

Francis Scott Key Annex Activity Map

The design for the “parks” and temporary uses will be refined over the next month, with a public workshop is scheduled for this Wednesday.  The permits should be secured by the end of August.  And the temporary installation is slated to be complete by the end of the year.

14 thoughts on “Oh Say Can You See What Should Be On This Site?”
  1. Great! Another color chart. Is it too difficult for the general public to read a report. I look forward to the day where a few diagrams and charts could substitute for legal briefs before the court. Why not just sell this land to a housing developer and let the private market decide the highest and best use of the land?

  2. Another site worthy of new life is the John W. Geary School at the end of Blake (and Cook). Hopefully the original structures are kept — plenty of room to build on the open areas.

  3. 20-floor slender highrise housing next to the streetcar stop and community garden and skate park on the rest of the site. No higher statement of this moment in San Francisco values possible…

  4. So these ideas are just temporary right? Sorry to sound harsh on this but: adding a new park 1.5 blocks from *a very large park* sounds like a horrible long-term solution.

    Longer term suggestion: decide to close a school (or schools) elsewhere, use that money+ and then put in a brand new school / facility here. I can imagine that elsewhere in the city, there are schools that are just costing a fortune to maintain or seismic-retrofitting.

        1. agree, and this should be a better and cheaper option for affordable housing thatn the mission. although i guess every contractor now knows the city is a sucker willing to pay anything

  5. I agree 100%. It has access to transit on the N-Judah line and should be considerably cheaper to build than the building in the Mission.

  6. Declining public school enrollment I guess. That school was gorgeous and art deco, breathtakingly so.

    1. I believe you’re thinking of the main campus not the annex discussed here. I remember walking here from the main campus sometimes for “field trips” in the 80s. Wish they still had the ice rink on 48th…

  7. You can do a mixed income housing on this site. Affordable/low income housing only would not work here. A mixture of larger units for families with parking and smaller units to take advantage of the transport here is optimal.

  8. The school moved to a new Francis Scott Key building a couple of blocks away a few years ago. But a park? Are you kidding me? GG park is 2 blocks away! In the midst of a housing crisis they aren’t prioritizing this site for housing – next to the N-Judah? Perhaps it’s because the activists who demand 100% affordable housing on public land would be 100% at odds with the neighbors, who would fight any affordable housing in their neighborhood. San Francisco politics at its worst! And we wonder why so little housing gets built!

  9. We’ve been hearing so much about how teachers can’t pay for housing in the bay area, so why not build housing for those employed by the school district? Not all would be able to live here based on location, but I imagine a great number of teachers would benefit from this kind of arrangement.

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