With Orchard Supply Hardware having been controversially denied their bid to convert the Pacific Sales building at 975 Bryant Street into a 33,000 square foot OSH with a nursery on its roof, plans to raze the existing building and develop over 180 new homes on the Showplace Square site were drafted, as we first reported at the time.

The refined designs for the proposed development, which have been drafted by Kwan Henmi, calls for a five-story building, with 185 apartments and a basement garage for 135 cars and 3,000 square feet of ground floor retail space, to rise up to 48 feet in height across the Bryant Street site, between Langton and Kate Streets.

The paperwork to secure the building permit for the 975 Bryant Street project has now been filed. And the plans for the development have just been deemed eligible for a streamlined environmental review as the project falls with the boundaries of San Francisco’s approved Eastern Neighborhoods Area Plan.

With respect to any knee-jerk comments of the “why not higher” ilk, keep in mind that the parcel is currently only zoned for development up to 48 feet in height.

In addition, the proposed project was designed to leverage “highly cost effective Type 5 construction,” which is limited to four stories of wood framing over a concrete podium and was seen as a selling point, not a flaw, when the property quietly changed hands for $27.5 million in mid-2015.

18 thoughts on “Development of Site Where OSH Was Denied Moves Closer to Reality”
  1. just a heads up, 2015 building code allows for 5 wood (type III) over 2 podium

    [Editor’s Note: But of course, Type III isn’t the same as Type V (which is cheaper).]

  2. I know it’s the zoning and I know this is an obvious comment, but it just kills me to see such small projects in Western SoMa. No matter how many times you tell me that’s the zoning, my face will contort into agony on seeing these renderings. Planning needs to rezone this area fast – and upzoning would be a great way to mitigate the criticism of the Central SoMa Plan for adding so many jobs with such little housing.

    1. Given the chance of up-zoning Western SOMA or DogPatch or the Richmond or Lakeshore or name the hood is slim to zero, it makes more sense not to add huge amounts of jobs. Whether in the Central SOMA or HP/CP . That is the only realistic solution given the SF situation. .

  3. Please tell me this is 100% “affordable”. Otherwise, who would pay to live at the confluence of three traffic sewers (Hwy 80, Central Frwy, & 7th St).

    1. You’d think. Look at the eye-popping rents the L Seven Apartments are asking at a pretty terrible, traffic-clogged corner, 8th and Harrison, just opposite the freeway from here. They’re comparable to a high-rise unit in 100 Van Ness.

    1. Obviously and idiotically. Huge lost opportunity for housing. Salesforce et al can fashionably try to raise hell to get Brisbane to build 4000 homes on the dump, but should instead put pressure on our own absurd zoning guidelines to address housing in a realistic and aggressive way. We underbuild site after site ad nauseum.

  4. Copy&Paste Architects are at it again. That cheap MDF cladding looks so stale the second it is installed and fades even quicker.

  5. In any other city, this would be seen as modest, working class housing, but here is will be promoted as “luxury.” It should be interesting to see if they can get top dollar is such as miserable location and cheap construction.

  6. Good temporary use for the site. If the market is up – in 20 years it will get torn down and something bigger constructed out of more permanent materials.

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