The most desolate stretch of Valencia — currently a fenced-off vacant lot at the intersection of 14th Street — will be 36 condos by spring of next year.
The $20 million project at 299 Valencia will contain 32 market-rate units, three commercial spaces and 29 subterranean parking spaces. Four of the units will be designated as affordable housing, said Sean Sullivan, a managing partner at JS Sullivan Development, the project’s developer. The project was designed by Leavitt Architecture of San Francisco.
JS Sullivan is the same team working on another infill mixed-use project a few blocks away, at 15th and South Van Ness.
“We are very excited about this development,” Sullivan told Mission Loc@l. “We feel we are bringing a lot of changes to an area that is seeing new residential projects and an increase in pedestrian traffic.”
JS Sullivan has collaborated on multiple housing projects in the Mission, mostly between 14th and 16th streets.
Plans to develop 299 Valencia began in earnest in 2005, but the poor real estate market and public opposition over the project’s high number of parking spaces hindered its progress.
The company waited until the economy rebounded to move forward with entitlements needed for construction, Sullivan said. It obtained approvals from the San Francisco Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors in 2009, and broke ground last year.
The building has yet to sign tenants for the project’s 5,000 square feet of retail space. Sullivan declined to speculate as to who those tenants might be, but did express interest in a restaurant or bakery.
Future residents will have both their vices and virtues covered — they’ll be a short walk from both Annunciation Cathedral and the headquarters of Kink.com.
This building was given special permission to add more parking spaces than the Market Octavia “transit oriented development” plan calls for which just happen to be conveniently located within two blocks of the freeway.
Let’s hope the ground floor commercial space in this is more appealing than what you see in most of these new condo projects on Valencia. It’s surprising how little attention is paid to the aesthetic of the ground floor. The developers of the older buildings were much more thoughtful in creating pedestrian-friendly and visually appealing commercial stores.
Stop these tacky people before it’s too late. Cookie cutter condo living? Blech! Innovation and exclusivity please!
Good news for more housing and businesses in the neighborhood. Glad to see this is finally starting.
are this units are market rate?
would any of those 40 units be below market rate? What’s the application process? Would mission resident’s have priorities over other individuals? How many 2 and three bedrooms units would it have?
This article sound more like a press release from Sullivan than a reporting piece in a neighborhood with a long history of displacements, evictions, and gentrification.
Too few units are below market rate. The application process is through the Mayor’s Office of Housing, if memory serves. Federal housing law prohibits prioritizing affordable housing for anyone, everyone has an equal chance at the lottery, although Russian and Chinese immigrant groups organize to game the system. Unsure of the unit mix, but unless they got a waiver from Market/Octavia, they are not all 1BR.
Yep, another puff piece for developers who are building us out of our neighborhood and forcing down housing prices by adding more supply when the market is slack and falling which keeps buyers on the sidelines and renting, driving those up while wages stagnate and fall. Brilliant economics on the part of the Mayor’s Office and Planning Department.