After being vacant for more than 10 years, the historic Superior Automotive building at 3140 16th St. will open Monday morning as an office of the Social Security Administration, according to several tech workers exiting the building on Saturday.
The workers were inside making last-minute checks. It’s unclear if the old office at 1098 Valencia St. has been permanently closed. The Social Security Administration’s office finder, however, now directs visitors to 3140 16th St., where it says the office will open Monday at 9 a.m.
The new use comes after a 10-year quest to find a buyer or tenant for the 1920s Beaux-Arts building at the corner of Albion and 16th streets. The opening activates a large space that has long attracted graffiti, some of which still remained on Saturday morning.
The building was designed more than 100 years ago by architect Joseph L. Stewart, “to herald the arrival of the single-occupant automobile,” Elizabeth Creely wrote in 2017 for Mission Local.
“They were built to park and repair cars in a city whose apartment buildings had no garages and, in a nod to the more-familiar horse stables, they were called “auto liveries.”
Early on, the space was repurposed into an auto-repair shop. The most recent owner of the garage was Jesse Henry, who ran Superior Automotive for 32 years. After renting for years, he purchased the space in 2004 for $2.5 million.
Henry closed his shop in September 2013 in anticipation of a sale that fell through, but sold it in 2014 for $8.7 million to Manouch Moshayedi’s MX3 Ventures, a family-owned real-estate and development firm based in Newport Beach, California.
“Beloved by preservationists for the classic Beaux-Arts formalism that characterized the post-earthquake period,” such buildings, Creely wrote in 2017, “can pose a challenge for developers.”
That proved to be the case.
MX3 Ventures intended to put in housing, but the 1920s Beaux-Arts building is protected, and could not be demolished. Other plans included an event space with a rooftop venue, and a bilingual preparatory school.
When Moshayedi landed the Social Security Administration lease in December 2022, he was thrilled, and told Annika Hom, “Obviously, the best tenant is the federal government of the United States,” he said. “You don’t get better credit than that anywhere.”
Hom reported that the lease would run for 13 to 15 years. Not all of the space is being used by the Social Security office and, presumably, is still available.
Talk about stretching the definition of “historic.”