Neglected Balboa Park offers opportunities for affordable housing

The Balboa Park Upper Yard, a wedge-shaped parking lot squeezed between Highway 280 and San Jose Avenue, isn’t anybody’s idea of picturesque real estate.

But the wind-swept island of concrete could be the key to something that has confounded housing advocates for decades: how to turn one of San Francisco’s busiest transportation nodes from transit backwater to transit village

In December, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development will issue a request for qualification for a developer to build 80 family housing units on the 1.8-acre property, which serves not only as a place to park automobiles but also as a “kiss-and-ride” drop-off point for commuters.

The project, which could break ground in a year, will be 100 percent affordable, probably geared toward families earning 60 percent of area median income, about $61,000 for a family of four, said Teresa Yanga, director of housing development for the office.

Broader interest sought
But Supervisor John Avalos is hoping that, beyond the housing and retail it will create, a transformation of the Upper Yard will spark broader interest in the Excelsior, a neighborhood that has been largely ignored by housing developers and retailers even as the city has been flooded with investment. It’s the only area in San Francisco where a BART station sits across the street from single-family homes and one-story buildings.

“We think all the work we have done to the Upper Yard is going to attract housing developers,” said Avalos, who has been working on the project since taking office in 2009.

The timing could be fortuitous as well. San Francisco voters will decide Tuesday on a $310 million affordable housing bond. While $50 million of the money will be earmarked for the Mission District, which has become the flash point in gentrification battles, the Excelsior district offers less expensive land, which means that the city could get more units for its buck by focusing there.

“If Prop. A passes, our intent is to pursue some opportunities in that district,” Yanga said.

Sites near BART station
The city has been looking at several sites within a few blocks of the Balboa Park BART Station. Properties under consideration include the old Safeway site at 355 Ocean Ave., a 50,000-square-foot parcel across San Jose Avenue from BART currently occupied by a parking lot and two-story church.

A few blocks east at Ocean and Alemany, there are two properties — 65 Ocean Ave. and 915-917 Cayuga Ave. — where separate developers have proposed a combined 169 units. Both of those projects have stalled, but the property owners may be amenable to selling or entering into a joint venture with a nonprofit builder should there be subsidies available from the bond money.

Another beneficiary could be Bridge Housing, a nonprofit that is looking at building about 100 units at 4840 Mission St., home of the Valente Marini Perata & Co. funeral home.

“The site is a terrific location for family affordable housing — close to BART, ample retail, (Balboa) High School and City College,” said Cynthia Parker, president and CEO of Bridge Housing. “We are in due diligence, so it would be premature to say more.”

‘Prime spot for housing’

Developer Brian Spiers, who owns the property at 65 Ocean Ave., has been talking to development partners, including affordable builders. He has recently helped find new homes for the two preschools on the property, the Crayon Box and Little Bear, both of which will be relocating next year.

“We think it’s a prime spot for housing,” Spiers said. “It’s a great neighborhood close to great transportation. We think it will be a somewhat affordable place to build, at least compared to the rest of San Francisco.”

But the Excelsior doesn’t just lack new housing — it needs a lot of other things. In planning for the Upper Yard project, an Excelsior group called Communities United for Health and Justice did a neighborhood survey of what District 11 residents wanted from thr project, according to Charlie Sciammas of the nonprofit Poder, who worked on the survey. In addition to affordable housing, improved public spaces, health clinics and job-training sites topped the list.

“The traditional approach is that the city issues a (request for proposals) and the developer leads the community process,” Sciammas said. “We flipped the script and led with the community.” The survey report will be turned over to whichever developer is picked for the project.


Neighbors also see the success of the Upper Yard development going hand in hand with the restoration of the historic car barn across the street on the southeast corner of San Jose and Geneva avenues. The Recreation and Park Department, which controls the property, is planning a project that will include a cafe, arts center and community space. While the first phase of construction could start next year, funds for the full $25 million renovation are unlikely to come until a 2018 bond.

“Just sticking a building in the Upper Yard is going to be like sticking a building in the middle of nowhere,” said Dan Weaver, who has led efforts to bring back the car barn. “It won’t work without Geneva Car Barn.”

Robert Muehlbauer, chairman of the Balboa Park Station Community Advisory Committee, said the Upper Yard development also needs to be planned in the context of $10 million of improvements that BART is making to its station. Those will include a new entrance and elevators on the Geneva Avenue side of the station, which will open out onto a plaza across from the Upper Yard retail.

“It’s starts with the hardscape,” Muehlbauer said. “It starts with the gutters, the sidewalks, the curbs, proper lighting. If you walk around that station now, there is no accessible path of travel. It’s dangerous for pedestrians.”

BART’s major interest

In fact, BART, will be more than a neighbor of the housing project. BART owns part of the Upper Yard — the Municipal Transportation Agency owns the rest — and will lease it for free to the city for 66 years.

“The days are past when BART can just say, ‘We just run trains, you guys deal with housing,’” said Nick Josefowitz, a BART board member. “One of the things that BART can do, and has to do, is make more of its land available to build affordable housing on.”

Avalos said that the Excelsior land has been important to the MTA for decades — home to storage, maintenance and painting operations — not things that benefit the average apartment dweller on Ocean Avenue.

“It’s the things that help the MTA function across the city, but not here in the neighborhood,” Avalos said. “We don’t see that wealth that is being used to sculpt other parts of San Francisco here. You hear about the economy lifting all boats in San Francisco. Well, we still get the basics.”

VIA [sfchronicle]