Few housing projects have been as contentious in San Francisco as the mid-2010s Bryant Street project proposed and completed by local developer Nick Podell.
The complex, when it was initially proposed in 2015, would have created 300 units of mostly market-rate housing in the heart of the Mission District’s industrial northeast. In the heyday of San Francisco’s anti-gentrification fights, it was at the center of a battle between developers and pro-housing advocates on one side, and tenant activists and Mission organizers on the other.
Mission activists demanded fully affordable housing, held rallies, packed city hearings, and dubbed the project the “Beast on Bryant.” They hoped city officials would vote against it.
But in the final days before it was approved in 2016, the developer’s lawyer added a sweetener to the deal: Podell promised to cover $500,000 of the costs to build out a community art space at a 100-percent affordable-housing project next door. He had earlier donated land to the city to make that affordable housing project possible.
The project was voted through 11-0.
The buildout of that community art space was finally completed this month, but the promised money, has yet to arrive.
Roberto Hernandez, the chief executive officer of Cultura y Arte Nativa de las Americas, which occupies the arts space at the affordable housing complex at 681 Florida St., said he spoke with Podell about a month ago.
Podell, he said, offered to pay $100,000 and told him he did not have any money, and that Hernandez should get the city to pay the sum.
Last week on Oct. 21, District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder called for a hearing to find out why and to help secure the payment.
“I’m hoping we can make this right,” said Fielder.
Podell did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The developers and owners of the 130 units of affordable housing at 681 Florida St., known as Casa Adelante, declined to comment.
Fielder’s office confirmed the supervisor spoke with Podell once, but the developer still refused to follow through with his 2016 commitment. The city attorney’s office did not confirm if the city had any liability for the payment.
The delay is the latest in a long-running saga. Podell first announced a plan to build more than 300 units at the intersection of 18th and Bryant streets and replace a series of smaller buildings that included the art space Cellspace, alongside some rent-controlled units.
It was fought viciously by local activists, who demanded 100-percent affordable housing there instead.
Opponents nicknamed the project “the Beast on Bryant” in keeping with similar campaigns that sought to block construction of new market-rate housing, like the Titanic Mess on South Van Ness, the Monster in the Mission and the Fright on Folsom.
After months of negotiations, Podell agreed to donate land at 681 Florida St. for the city to build a nine-story, 130-unit affordable housing project with an art space. He then committed to give $500,000 to build out the arts space on its ground floor.
The city subsequently approved the 196-unit market-rate project next door at 2000 Bryant St. in 2016.
Podell’s commitment was clear to those involved at the time. In a 2016 hearing in front of the Board of Supervisors, Podell’s representative, attorney Steven Vettel, said his client had committed to providing $500,000 in capital to build out the 10,000 feet community art space. The commitments followed up with a letter to then-District 9 Supervisor David Campos bearing Podell’s name on the same date as that hearing.
“This letter is to memorialize several revisions that we are prepared to incorporate in the project to address community concerns,” the letter reads. “We will provide $500,000 in capital funding for tenant improvements to the community arts space in the MOHCD building.”
The buildout was completed this month, but payment has not yet been made.
Emails obtained by Mission Local show communication from 2021 to April of this year between the two affordable housing developers, the Mission Economic Development Agency and the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, and Junius Real Estate Partners, a New York company.
Junius appears to represent Podell, as his name and a potential payment are referenced throughout the emails. The emails show attempts by the affordable housing developers to obtain the $500,000. Junius and Podell did not reply to multiple emails from Mission Local.
“We had been working on this draft with Podell and their legal team for some time — are they out of the picture right now?” a member of the affordable housing team wrote to the investment firm in 2021, in reference to an earlier exchange regarding the ability to include the tenant’s design and engineering cost as an eligible expense.
The Junius representative replied that tenant improvement funds could be disbursed “to whatever entity you want.”
In a later exchange in January of this year, Kevin Straub, a Junius representative, wrote to Jose Garcia, chief real estate officer at MEDA, that the funds were to be sent on completion of the project. Garcia wrote in October “kindly asking” for the $500,000 as construction wrapped up.
Junius did not respond to that email, according to Hernandez from Cultura y Arte Nativa de las Americas, which occupies the arts space.
Hernandez hopes the city can help them obtain the funds. The city attorney’s office, for its part, will not acknowledge if it has weighed in on the matter.
“Any advice we may have provided to our clients on this topic is confidential under attorney-client privilege,” wrote Jen Kwart, the director of communications at the city attorney’s office.
When asked who the office’s client was, Kwart said the information was confidential.
A general contractor who did work on the arts space is ultimately the party awaiting the half-million-dollar payment.
Podell is also the president of Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Advocacy, a 501(c)(4) organization that has donated millions to San Francisco politics.
Fielder’s request for a hearing did not require a vote. No date has been set.
The golden goose of ‘subsidized’ housing. 99% will get nothing and a few winners will get everything. 99% of people actually lose and a few select winners get it all, in the performative subsidized housing sweepstakes. Solves nothing for the vast majority of people, but is good advertising for votes from desperate fools, for craven politicians who fool people into thinking they ‘care’. THEY DON’ T CARE…
This is how the extortion operation works right here.
The conveyance of the public benefit of project approval for undesirable projects are mitigated by the extortion of payments to private connected political operators coordinated by elected officials.
The public interest is nowhere to be found in any of this.
And land use attorneys reap the spoils…
Sue Hestor and Calvin Welch have made a good living out of obstructing the construction of housing in SF for decades.
Both are long-term home owners of course 🙂
My understanding is that Hestor and Welch, who are sunsetting these days, both live in tenancies in common that may or may not have involved an eviction.
Calvin Welch has the amazing power such that whatever he demands from the government in writing, the precise opposite gets enacted as public policy.
David do you have anything to back up your claims, or nothing as usual?
Hestor and Welch are principals of “The San Francisco Information Clearinghouse” that’s the parent operation of the Council of Community Housing Organizations.
Information clearinghouse is another word for cartel. The purpose of the operation was to set up affordable housing nonprofits along with community benefit nonprofits that make claims on public resources and then trade public entitlements for private purposes as we’ve seen here.
What happens to these gifted resources after Hernandez goes out of business or dies? A nonprofit is allowed to cashier out assets and go into a different line of business if the board votes that way. This is the risk of privatization of public resources and entitlements.
Exactly!
Also “A general contractor who did work on the arts space is ultimately the party awaiting the half-million-dollar payment.”
So the GE did the work for free and is waiting payment or waiting for a 500k gift?
See I count 500,000 things in the public interest, if the debt should be paid.
Who says backroom side deals where the connected get crumbs so that developers can build out are ever in the public interest?
Mafiosi annoyed their protection racket is falling through.
If R and J is involved it can’t be good — just ask Planning Chief of Staff and CP managers.
Wow, kudos to the developer who found one easy trick to getting out of paying the local extortion racket for its bribes! Stuff like this should be a criminal liability for the “community groups” that turn out “concerned neighbors” to fleece future residents for their grift.
Jake T desperately wants to live in Las Vegas.
So extortion is okay with you so long as your friends are the beneficiaries?
And the list goes on, the hotel on MUNI property 1 Hotel, did they ever pay the city? Give away property at Balboa Park, Kapuso at the Upper Yard, and the Potrero MUNI yard giveaway to the developers. You really think MUNI can handle condos? They cannot even run their buses on time let alone fill the potholes in their bus stops, another SCAM.
Potrero Yard isn’t and never was going to be given away. It will remain City-owned, even with the recent shortsighted move to cut most of the affordable housing.
So called “affordable” housing is a myth. It costs the same to build an “affordable” housing unit as a market rate housing unit. The only difference is that the project sponsor makes a loss on the deal.
So it is better t call it what it is – subsidized housing. And by definition subsidies are limited. So requests for a project to be “100% affordable” are mostly untenable.
” It costs the same to build an “affordable” housing unit as a market rate housing unit.” – Wrong.
“So requests for a project to be “100% affordable” are mostly untenable.” – Wrong.
You always pretend to be a developer, a legal scholar, all kinds of things and you get the basics wrong in the process.
Shortsighted? It’s the outcome NIMBYs and PHIMBYs like yourself want through endless community review and FUD about market rate housing.
All you do is spend your day whining about lower income classes and pretending you’re hot stuff.
You don’t ever get around to addressing people’s actual points or concerns, always changing the subject and making attacks you can’t substantiate.
I’d pray for you but it’d do nothing.
Was Podell’s housing project completed as it was defined in 2016?
So, no contract, no formal Letter of Intent, just a somewhat casual letter sans payment terms that Cultura y Arte Nativa de las Americas ran with.
Surprise… pushed for the money, Podell switches to un-promise mode.
I hope the City doesn’t blink to make any funds available. At the chance Podell has continuing interest in doing business here, and there’s legal standing, what the City should consider instead is debarring Podell from projects that involve City money, and try shake loose the $500k from Podell that way.
Man that GATE is beautiful. Congrats to those students, A++
It’s the rest of the article that’s just ugly…