Shopping center owners want to stack housing on retail
By: Katie Worth
Examiner Staff Writer
November 13, 2008
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| Shop at home: In addition to building new housing units, owners of the Potrero Center would like to be allowed to continue leasing space to chain stores. (Katie Worth/The Examiner) |
SAN FRANCISCO — The Potrero Center on 16th Street — a rarity in San Francisco with its large parking spaces and strip-mall-style lineup of chain stores — is about to receive an urban makeover.
Today, the Planning Commission will consider an amendment to the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan that will allow owners of the shopping center — home to Safeway, an Office Depot, a half-dozen other big-box stores and hundreds of parking spaces — to build several stories of housing units on top of the current retail buildings.
Owners proposed the amendment, which would more than double the shopping center’s height limit from 40 to 85 feet and also includes an agreement to sell 22 percent of the housing built at below-market-rate prices.
The amendment also asks that the shopping center be allowed to continue to house chain stores indefinitely, even if chain stores are outlawed throughout the rest of The City.
Robert Lalanne, one of two principal owners, said he and his partners have no immediate plan to build up on the property.
“With home prices and credit markets where they are, it doesn't make much sense to build right now, but certainly I think someday it will,” he said.
The 8-acre Potrero Center was built on the site of the old San Francisco Seals baseball stadium, and has been home to chain stores since, Lalanne said.
“It’s been big-box retail since its very inception,” he said.
Tony Kelly, president of the Potrero Boosters neighborhood association, said the group has no problem with the proposed project.
“If the right arrangement is struck to get a significant portion of the [new residences] to be affordable housing, then it’s fine — it’s smart growth,” he said.
Mario Figueroa, a parking attendant at the shopping center, said adding housing is a good idea.
“I used to live in The City but I moved to Oakland because it’s cheaper,” he said. “But if I could find a place right here that I could afford, I’d be the first in line.”
