What may have been the most expensive development purchase in San Francisco in 2014 — to replace a shuttered auto shop in the Mission District — has eliminated all of its housing units, going from 28 units to none within two years.
The parcel at 3140 16th St., the former Superior Automotive shop, was acquired by Mx3 Ventures in 2014 for $8.7 million, or about $350,000 per planned market-rate unit. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that per-unit cost as “likely the most expensive development site ever sold” in the city at the time, evidence of the desperation of developers to snatch up the precious few remaining lots in the Mission District.
Curbed SF, which first reported the elimination of the project’s housing units, wrote that developers planned to use both stories of the original building for a restaurant and construct a roof deck on top.
In July, the project faced a financial hurdle when the city deemed the 1926 building historic. The decision meant developers would have to maintain the original building, and they announced they would slash their unit count from 28 to just four to do so.
That downsizing resulted in a new per-unit cost of $2.2 million. Project sponsors did not return requests for comment, so it’s not clear whether that new cost pushed them to eliminate the units altogether in favor of a non-housing project. A multi-million dollar sticker price per unit may have made it impossible for a residential building to pencil out financially.