SF Standard owner Michael Moritz trashed Supervisor Aaron Peskin in the NY Times yesterday. Today we get some insight into why, as a Telegraph Hill condo project Moritz is backing just had its applications canceled, though mostly because of a missed deadline.

On Wednesday, local venture capital magnate and SF Standard owner Michael Moritz got another New York Times op-ed, a lengthy diatribe against District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin. This is curious, given what tiny percentage of New York Times readers have any idea who Aaron Peskin even is. And one of the many arguments Moritz lodges against Peskin sounds somewhat personal, as he wrote, “Mr. Peskin has attacked my involvement in an ambitious plan to build a large housing development in northern San Francisco.”

Peskin got his own chance to respond in a Chronicle op-ed today. “Never in my recollection have I heard of the Times publishing a billionaire’s 1,300-word attack on a local politician on the other side of the country, but it is worth knowing a bit more about Moritz than the Times has thus far conveyed,” Peskin responded. “As Moritz admits in his Times op-ed, he has also invested heavily in commercial real estate in San Francisco, including plans to raze a historic building on the northern waterfront to construct a towering new luxury structure. In other words, Mortitz’s views on real estate development — and his views about me — are driven, in substantial part, by self-interest.”

Whether you call it a “large housing development” or a “towering new luxury structure,” the project both men are referring to is a proposed 17-story condo at 1088 Sansome Street. The building currently at this location just two blocks from the Bay is only three stories. The project has been in the works for most of 2024, but on Thursday, the Chronicle reported that the project now appears to be dead.

And it wasn’t Aaron Peskin that killed the project. Per the Chronicle, the project’s application was “automatically canceled” because the project sponsor did not submit a full plan within the required 180-day timeframe.

Still, Peskin’s fingerprints are all over the complicated history of the 112-unit condo project. Proposed in January, it took advantage of the state density bonus rules that allowed for higher heights in exchange for more affordable units. And Peskin himself was behind 2023 legislation to make office-to-housing conversions easier in certain parts of downtown, which would have included the 1088 Sansome site. But since then, Peskin has managed to pass new legislation that tightened up some of those rules, and the new rules now apply to that property.    

If the 1088 Sansome project sponsors had submitted their plans by the deadline, the project would have been grandfathered in under the more relaxed rules. They did not. They can reapply a new proposal for the property, but under Pekin’s revised rules, the waterfront property would not be able to be as tall — and the Telegraph Hill Dwellers neighborhood group is more than likely to fight the project to the end, as they have other large developments in the area.

Related: Local Billionaire Michael Moritz Pens Another NYT Op-Ed, This Time Attacking Aaron Peskin [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

While condo sales, especially in downtown San Francisco high-rises, were sluggish at best through the pandemic, things appear to be turning around. And one notable tower only has a handful of units left to sell.

Mira, the 40-story tower at 280 Spear Street completed in 2019, was designed by Studio Gang — the firm of Chicago-based architect Jeanne Gang, which now has an office in San Francisco. It features a twisting pattern of bay windows that are meant to echo the bays of the city's many Victorian and Edwardian buildings, and it is now one of the most notable buildings in the city's skyline.

The 392-unit tower includes 147 designated affordable units, all of which went into the city's lottery five years ago. And as the Business Times reports this week, the remaining market-rate units have taken a while to sell out, but the pace of sales has picked up since the start of the year.

"I think we're seeing the beginning of the shift," says Matt Felt, managing director at Polaris Pacific, speaking to the Business Times.

The rise in interest rates in the last two years, combined with the ongoing "doom loop" narrative about downtown, served to depress sales of high-rise condos, but prices are stabilizing, Felt says.

There are just 12 units remaining to be sold at Mira, putting the building at 90% sold out, and 15 condos have sold in the tower in the last 60 days alone. One of those was a two-bedroom unit on the 34th floor that sold for $1.75 million last month. A two-bedroom corner unit on the 19th floor is currently pending sale at $1.45 million.

Some of the remaining units are in the upper-floor "Panorama Collection," which feature more open floor plans on the 36th through 40th floors. One of those, a three-bedroom on the 39th floor, is listed at $3.75 million.

The Chronicle has a story today about condos starting sell at a faster clip over on Yerba Buena Island. The first upscale development completed on Yerba Buena and Treasure islands, The Bristol, has sold about 50 units so far, out of 124 in the building and 266 that will be on Yerba Buena Island once development is complete.

As the Chronicle notes, units in The Bristol are priced between $550,000 to $4.4 million, and six are currently under contract.

The Cove Residences are the development's next phase, which are 12 luxury townhouse units that hit the market this week. Prices for these start just under $3 million, but go up to $12 million for a 4,000-square-foot townhome with a private elevator.

Once development is complete on Treasure Island, sometime in the next decade or so, the area is set to have 8,000 new homes. But amenities are slim for now, and residents of The Bristol currently still need to ferry (or drive) over to San Francisco to do their grocery shopping.

Home prices have ticked slightly downward in San Francisco in recent weeks, with inventory levels on the rise. As Socketsite reports, the city just hit a 13-year seasonal high for the number of single-family homes and condos on the market. "As such there are nearly 50 percent more homes on the market in San Francisco than average for this time of the year, over 50 percent more homes on the market than there were prior to the pandemic, and nearly 150 percent more homes on the market than there were in March of 2015," Socketsite writes.

Related: Big Investor and Protégé of Warren Buffett Looks to Buy 3 Million Square Feet of SF Office Space

Mohammed Nuru bribery complications left a 12-story, 109-unit residential building empty for nearly three years, but that building known as The Oak just got the OK to convert from condos to apartments under a new owner who does not have any bribery charges.

There’s long been a debate about whether there’s a significant amount of SF housing units sitting vacant. But in some cases, you can tell a residential building is vacant just by looking at it.

That was the case with the 12-story, 109-unit residential condo building at 1554 Market Street, whose full technical address is 1546–1564 Market Street, and whose name in marketing materials is The Oak (It is located near Market and Oak streets). While the condo building was completed in early 2021, its co-owner was arrested on bribery charges in the sprawling Mohammed Nuru corruption mess, which obviously complicated finding buyers. That same co-owner, Chinese tycoon Zhang Li, had similar legal problems that have stalled the Trader Joe’s at 555 Fulton Street.

The disgraced Li finally found a new buyer for the property this past November, according to an SF Business Times report from around that time. And the new owner, SoCal-based real estate investor Steve Hong, hoped to convert the building from condos to apartments.

The SF Planning Department, exasperated that 109 ready-to-go units were just sitting vacant, was all ears. “We’ll try to get this to the Planning Commission as quickly as possible,” Planning Department chief of staff Dan Sider vowed to the Business Times in early December.

He got his wish. And on Thursday, the SF Planning Commission approved that conversion from condos to rental apartments in a 5-0 vote.

“We are obviously delighted that this project is becoming a reasonable project again,” commissioner Kathrin Moore said before the vote. “ We are seeing graffiti and it being really very much affected over the last year or two. And we all regretted that, because we thought this was a new beginning in that particular block.”

There’s still some downside tenants for who’d previously registered to live there, as the Chronicle reported in December that some below-market-rate (BMR) tenants had won the lottery to get affordable units at The Oak, only to lose those units when Li’s finances went belly-up.  

A representative from the new project’s sponsors, OakSF, LLC, told the Planning Commission that “Due to the dysfunction of the previous ownership and the high interest rates, the vast majority of the folks voluntarily have requested their deposits back. The new ownership took ownership without anyone’s deposits, or ownership claims on any of the units.”

But there were six tenants or families who had won the BMR unit lottery for The Oak. According to Planning Department staff, three have since gotten BMR housing elsewhere, one has received down payment assistance for a different unit, another is back in the lottery, the last one got their deposit back and hasn’t pursued further BMR lottery units.

Related: Long-Vacant, Frequently Tagged Mid-Market Condo May Finally Become Occupied as Apartments [SFist]

Image via Google Street View

It is a very San Francisco problem to have a 12-story, 109-unit residential building just completely vacant for nearly three years because its owner got popped in the Mohammed Nuru scandal. But there may be new life for the empty building known as The Oak.

For years, the 1554 Market Street condo tower called The Oak has had a sign on it declaring “Now Selling.” Reader, it was not selling. As seen below, the 12-story, 109-unit residential building, also listed by the address 55 Oak Street, has been vacant since it was completed in 2021, attracting squatters and graffiti, but no residents.

That’s because the building was owned by a Chinese real estate firm called Z&L Properties, whose co-founder Zhang Li was arrested for bribing Mohammed Nuru in that whole scandal. This is the same Z&L Properties that owned the 555 Fulton building whose Trader Joe’s has been held up forever, and the scandal has forced them to dump most of their Bay Area properties.

But many are finding buyers, and that appears to have happened at The Oak. The SF Business Times reported Friday that a new developer has submitted plans to make The Oak apartment units instead of condos, and to fill those 109 apartments ASAP. While that developer, Steve Hong, does not yet own the building on paper, his Oak SF LLC has bought the $80 million construction loan tied to the project, and he intends to take ownership and convert to apartments instead of condos.  

“The San Francisco rental housing market is dynamic and presents many opportunities,” Hong told the Chronicle. “We believe in the resilience of the market and are optimistic about its long-term growth. Factors such as job growth in technology and AI contribute to our positive outlook.”

The SF Planning Department has a somewhat more jaded view.

“It’s been incredibly frustrating to have more than 100 homes ready for occupancy but which don’t have human beings in them on account of the fact that the ownership couldn’t get their act together,” Planning Department chief of staff Dan Sider also told the Chron. “We have a beautiful structure ready for occupancy — it’s time to get something done there.”

The Chronicle also spoke with one jilted family who won the below market-rate lottery to get a condo there, only to have the rug pulled out by Z&L Properties abandoning the place. And yes, that’s a tragedy for that family. But it is a larger win that we may finally see tenants move into that entirely empty building.

“It’s beautiful brand new construction that has already become blight,” Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association president Jen Laska said to the Chronicle. “We need to see that space activated.”

The conversion from condos to apartments may be a sign of the economic times, as the very nearby and similarly named proposed building One Oak, at Oak and Van Ness streets, also changed its proposal from condos to apartments last year. Though that property went into foreclosure in April, and a mixed-use development across the street halted construction over the summer, leading to further uncertainty for both projects.

Related: One Oak Property Has Reportedly Gone Into Foreclosure, 40-Story Tower Likely Won’t Get Built [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

More intentional drama is being generated over the implausible 50-story condo tower a developer is proposing to build in the Sunset District. After City Hall rejected it for the umpteenth time last month, the developer is now suing the city.    

It has been difficult to take seriously a proposal to build a 580-foot condo tower in the Sunset, a neighborhood that is otherwise mostly one- or two-level single family homes. But the developer claiming they would go through with this 646-unit project right across from the SF Zoo keeps producing rendering after rendering, only to be repeatedly told the proposal is completely out of whack with the neighborhood’s zoning. The latest of these repudiations was a July 26 Board of Appeals meeting, where that board voted unanimously to reject the plans again according to The Frisc.

So now, the developer, 2700 Sloat Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of Reno-based CH Planning, is suing the city of San Francisco for rejecting the project, according to the Chronicle. The lawsuit, which you can read online, was filed Tuesday.

“The State of California is in the midst of a historic housing crisis — a crisis that has largely been brought on by NIMBYs and their enablers in local governments who continue to thwart the will of the Legislature and find ways to unlawfully interfere with the production of housing,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit claims that the developer should be able to build this 50-story behemoth under the California’s Density Bonus Law (DBL), which allows developers to exceed regulation limits if they add more affordable housing. That state law has led to some really terrific affordable housing projects to be approved, but this one goes way beyond the density bonuses afforded under state law.

The lawsuit is defiant over the latest City Hall rejection. “It is a new regulation issued unlawfully and in violation of recent state legislation intentionally and admittedly designed to limit the size of residential buildings to give the City’'s Planning Department additional discretion to deny or limit the size of housing developments,” the lawsuit says.

The project at 2700 Sloat Boulevard had originally been proposed in 2020 as an eight-story tower with 213 residential units, and then resubmitted again in 2021 as a 12-story building with 400 units. That the developer is bulking it up to unrealistic levels, rather than negotiating, does not indicate good faith.

“It kind of defies logic that you could take a site that has a 100-foot height limit, apply a 50% bonus to it and somehow get a 560-foot tower,” SF Planning Department director Rich Hillis told the Chronicle. “We think they’re wrong in their interpretation of what’s allowed under the zoning.”

We have noted before that developer CH Planning’s primary consultant John Hickey has done time in federal prison for defrauding investors, and has a history of proposing improbably large projects that never get close to breaking ground.

This seems more just another protest move — or negotiating tactic? — designed to antagonize and troll SF City Hall, decrying that it is difficult to approve and build housing here (which it is!), but then gumming up the works with more frivolous litigation that will take resources away from the city's ability to approve more realistic projects.

Related: New Renderings Drop For 50-Story Tower In the Sunset That Is Absolutely Never Going to Get Built [SFist]

Image: Solomon Cordwell Buenz

More than 50 units of housing have sat empty for two years on property that used to be the home of Hemlock Tavern, but they can now be occupied, as the Board of Appeals rules on a developer who said they were building apartments and then switched to condos.

It’s a San Francisco story that’s been told countless times over the recent decades: A longtime popular nightclub closes because an owner wants to convert the land into a much more lucrative housing project. But this one is being called “unprecedented,” thanks to some highly unusual extenuating circumstances.

The former Polk Street bar Hemlock Tavern was torn down in 2019 to make way for 54 residential units. The new building with all 54 of those apartment units was promptly built, and was mandated to include eight affordable, below-market-rate (BMR) units to meet the city’s requirements.  More than 2,500 households applied for those units, and a few lucky winners were awarded.

This is all the usual script for a San Francisco housing development, but then the script got flipped. The developer Dolmen Property Group decided to make the units into much more lucrative condominiums instead of apartments, after the rental market took a pandemic hit. And as the Chronicle reports, that led to legal fights that kept the building empty for two years, fights that were finally resolved at Wednesday’s San Francisco Board of Appeals meeting.

The Dolmen Property Group was still allowing the eight affordable units. But their switching to a for-sale condo model rejiggered the economics of it, and meant that the people who’d been awarded the affordable housing rental apartments suddenly could not afford to buy there.

“Switching from rental to for-sale would essentially force those lottery winners into attempting to qualify to become homeowners — something many of them may not be able to do, or may not be interested in doing,” as the Chronicle explains. “In addition, the developer at first argued that the for-sale units should target households making 90% of area median income, rather than the 55% that would have been required as a rental.”

The fight went on for years, with at least two of the affordable housing lottery winners suing. In the compromise deal approved Wednesday at the Board of Appeals, Dolmen Property Group agreed to keep that lower 55% of median income threshold for the BMR units, so the lottery winners can still potentially get the homes.

In voting to lower the threshold for them, Board of Appeals President Rick Swig noted that buyers and renters are “absolutely are different” and “live in different worlds,” adding that the condo rate “left behind a significant portion of our residents.”

SF Planning Department zoning administrator Corey Teague said the situation was “unprecedented,” but come on… it shouldn’t have been! This was the obvious, common-sense compromise that the developer should have made years ago. You can totally, justifiably complain that there is too much red tape in getting built in San Francisco. But in this case, the developer pulled the switcheroo, and chose to renege on what they’d already agreed to. Those units certainly did not sit empty for two years because of any red tape.

This won't bring back the Hemlock Tavern. But thankfully, at least the matter is now resolved and the limbo, vacancy period for the new building is over.

Related: Eight-Story Condo Development With Replacement Grubstake Diner on Ground Floor Wins Planning Approval [SFist]

Image: Google Street View

Is the COVID-19 era really the best time for a cruise-ship themed hotel and condo project? Perhaps the Warriors are having second thoughts, as they just announced this very strange Chase Center add-on is “indefinitely delayed.”

I admit that I did not know until today that the Golden State Warriors were planning to build a hotel-condo onto the Chase Center. And had I known this, I would have been making cruise ship jokes about it, because according to the San Francisco Business Times, it was going to be “Shaped like a cruise ship and facing toward the bay.” Is a cruise ship theme perhaps the wrong idea for the times, considering the notorious role cruise ships played as COVID-19 superspreading vectors in the early days of the pandemic?

Then again, maybe it's fine, because the hotel aspect of this thing would probably be primarily for visiting-team basketball fans who are unlikely to give a tinker's cuss about travel-related public health risks. A rendering for the project is seen above (it’s in the middle), but maybe the rendering is all we’ll ever see of this thing. Because that San Francisco Business Times report I mentioned is a report that the Chase Center hotel-condo, originally slated to open next year, is now “indefinitely delayed” with no timetable for breaking ground.

The full quote comes from Warriors President and COO Brandon Schneider, who responded to a Business Times inquiry about the project by saying "Again, the project has been delayed indefinitely, so nothing has changed here."

The Board of Supervisors approved the hotel-condo in July 2020, according to the Chronicle. But even if this thing is never built, it’s not exactly a huge blow to the housing stock supply. It was only slated to have "21 condos” in addition to nearly 130 hotel rooms and 12,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.

Should this whole thing get momentum and start up again, the hotel would be operated by SH Hotels & Resorts, who handled the renovation of the former Hotel Vitale, now operating as 1 Hotel San Francisco.

Related: Proposed Mint Plaza ‘Pod Hotel’ Hits a Snag, as Rival Pod Hotel Group Claims Trademark Infringement [SFist]

Image: via Gensler

Well, the owners and marketers of the new Serif condos on mid-Market have come up with a novel solution for the smallness of their studio units: optional furniture add-ons that include mechanical beds that rise up and stow themselves away on the ceiling.

Welcome back to Apartment Sadness, SFist's occasional series that took a long pandemic break since, well, there was more to be sad about besides the lack of affordability/livability of SF apartments. And, all of a sudden, at least for a minute there, it was a lot easier to find an apartment!

Things may not be completely back to pre-COVID normal, but market-rate homes in SF remain depressingly expensive for many of us, and rents are inching back to about where they were in early 2020 before the much ballyhoo'd, and possibly very brief, mass exodus from the city.

Today, because it's so fitting, we bring you not a rental property, but a condo — a whole group of condos, in fact. These are the smallest of the units in the new Serif complex at 960 Market, between Mason and Taylor (Fifth and Sixth). The flatiron-shaped building has been under construction for several years now — SFist first reported on the plans in 2014 — and the finished, 12-story, 408,000-square-foot project includes a 236-room hotel, and a 242-unit condo portion. The opening of the building was delayed last year, and it appears that the opening of the hotel, The Line, still has not happened.

According to a marketing video posted to Serif's Facebook in February, the building has contracted with Bumblebee Spaces to provide drop-from-the-ceiling furniture options in the building's design studio. Bumblebee appears to be the modern answer to Murphy beds, which have long been a space-saving solution for small, urban apartments.

Mind you these are studios that start around $540,000 and go up from there.

The SF Standard has since covered the drop-down bed situation, noting that the Serif touts this as a way to turn a studio's living space into a "multi-functional flex space" — as opposed to an apartment where your bed is spitting distance from the kitchen and there's barely room for any other furniture. Also, they note that the Bumblebee beds will run buyers $12,000 extra as an add-on, though back in February it looked like there were "credits" available to buyers, as a perk.

Above, you can see an actress portraying a possible Serif buyer, just rising in the morning in her multi-functional flex space, looking up at the winch technology above her that will take her bed away at the tap of an app.

Below, there she is contemplating her stowable bed on cables as it rises back to its daytime home, remembering that her mortgage is $3,200 a month for this, and she should have just stayed in Arizona like her father said and she'd be living in a three-bedroom house for this price.

And yay! There's room to do pretend yoga now! No need to worry about the condo market in San Francisco tanking again!

In addition to the hideaway ceiling bed, Serif and Bumblebee are offering hideaway desks on cords, in case you're crazy or lazy enough to want to work from home in a 340-square-foot apartment.

And, also, there are hideaway storage boxes to go with the beds — a place to hide your jewelry and condoms and such, which drop down next to the bed.

Below are the three studio layouts available at the Serif. And they're kinda tight! They range in size from from 337 square feet to 360 square feet, according to these listings. And you'll need those drop-down boxes to stow stuff in when all you get is one tiny closet — and zero pantry space.

This is the reality we're living in, I guess, if you want to own property for less than $600K in San Francisco. You will not be getting a functional kitchen or entertaining space to speak of, but maybe if you have a bed that disappears onto the ceiling you can squeeze more than one other person in for cocktails.

At least the bathrooms are kind of nice!

All previous editions of Apartment Sadness on SFist.

Image: Getty Images/Sundry Photography

We know you don’t always watch the little news video reports we embed in these posts, but you really ought to watch the CBS 5 report above on homeowners scamming the system and renting out Below Market Rate housing units illegally. “Get away! Get! Get! Get away!” shouts one woman as she is busted at a residence other than the one she was granted by San Francisco’s Below Market Rate (BMR) Ownership Program. “Stop recording. I’m going to call my attorney right now,” says another, found in Redwood City though she rents out her BMR condo at the Embarcadero. The illegal renting of BMR units has long been a problem, and CBS 5’s Susie Steimle does some fantastic journalist pounding of the pavement to find several homeowners who’d been awarded low-cost BMR housing, but were advertising these units as rentals on Airbnb and Craigslist in violation of the law.

The “Get away! Get! Get! Get away!” lady is Margarita Popova, whose BMR condo was advertised on Craigslist for $3,100 a month. But CBS 5 found her at her home in the avenues, at which neighbors confirmed she’s lived for years.

In the tony Redwood City suburb of Emerald Hills, they found Caroline Novak — owner of a BMR condo at the Embarcadero. “I am just staying here, for a couple days,” Novak told CBS 5.

Even the despised and sinking Millennium Tower pops up in this report! Not because a BMR on that property is being illegally rented (to our knowledge), but because Millennium Tower resident Amy Gussin has her BMR program-awarded condo on New Montgomery Street available on Airbnb for $149 a night. Gussin owns additional properties in New York, Beijing, and Los Angeles, so you’ve got to wonder how she qualified for this program.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera is currently prosecuting three cases of BMR homes being illegally rented out, and served notices of complaint to the three named in CBS 5’s reporting. The mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development says they're investigating roughly of these 40 cases citywide.

Perhaps the most notorious of these is the case of Greg Garver, who bought a BMR unit at the SOMA Grand for $221,698 in 2008. He’s alleged to have rented the place illegally for $2,400 a month, then attempted to increase the rent last year to $18,000 a month (!!!) before moving in himself, then moving back out and renting it again. In his prosecution of this case, Dennis Herrera also noted, “Garver’s dogs would lunge at other residents, and on at least two occasions, video footage captured Garver training the dogs in the hallway of the building to attack and bite an associate. “

CBS 5 notes that the only way most of these affordable housing scofflaws are caught is when neighbors report them. Maybe that’s why Garver was training the dogs to attack.

Related: Middle Class Screwed In Current S.F. Housing Market

The development boom has lowered the boom on the late, great Lexington Club, displaced the iconic Doc’s Clock, and taken the lives of many beloved longtime Valencia Corridor restaurants and bars because of “whacked out” rent and proliferation of condos. But one particular watering hole and music venue has been reliably able to delay its own displacement, and has done so again. The Elbo Room will remain open at its current location until January 2019, Mission Local reports, having signed an additional one-year lease on top of the current extension that allowed the bar to stay put until 2018.

“We are excited. It means everybody still has jobs,” Elbo Room co-owner Matt Shapiro told Mission Local before a Monday night staff meeting announcing the news. The Elbo Room was originally slated to get kicked out its 647 Valencia Street location in November 2015, but has won one reprieve after another as the development of a proposed condominium remains embroiled in red tape.

Here we see the unpleasantness proposed for the Elbo Room’s current location, held up in Discretionary Review with the Planning Department as neighbors object to blocked views and other environmental impacts. Those delays have nicely enabled the Elbo to grease yet another year at Valencia Street and Sycamore Street as building owners Dennis and Susan Ring continue to wrangle for building permits — and it should be noted that the condo project is slated to include a home for them as they plan for their own retirement. "Dennis and Susan are still working towards their condo project, however, as far as we know, they have yet to acquire the building permit," Shapiro told Hoodline.

"They decided to offer us another year, since that will be mutually beneficial to both parties,” he added.

Mission Local also points out that Elbo Room had nearly signed on to move to the El Valenciano location at Valencia Street and 22nd Street, which is up for grabs. But the aforementioned “whacked out” rent undid that deal. "We got pretty far with it actually But the further we went with it, the more outrageously expensive it became," Shapiro told Hoodline. "This lease extension could not have come at a better time."

Nonetheless, it’s just an extension and a delay of the inevitable move. While the Elbo Room does have legacy business status, it falls just short of the 30-year status that can help keep a business in its original location. (One more extension would do the trick!) That 647 Valencia Street location does have historical and alcoholical significance, as it was previously the pioneering lesbian bar Amelia’s in the 1980s, and during the 70s was occupied by gay bars named The Gaslight and Gay 90s.

Related: Local Nightclub Owners Make Noise At City Hall Over Shutdown Threats From New Condos

One thing that San Francisco is most known for is its timeless and gorgeous historic architecture. The Victorian/Edwardian aesthetic that pervades our fair city, with its bay windows, decorative cornices, and detailed appliqués is what seduced many of us to move to the Bay Area, and what inspires so many tourists to still snap pictures of "Painted Ladies." But future generations will no doubt hate us for the boxy and Esprit-colored condominium detritus with which the most recent tech boom blighted our cityscape — if any of these ticky-tacky atrocities even last a generation, that is, given how little interest developers seem to have in spending money on good architects. I've picked out a few of the current most hideous condo complexes, but rest assured there are even uglier ones in the Planning Commission pipeline.

NOTE: This list only includes condominiums. Many of you rightfully despise structures like NEMA and 38 Dolores, but these are luxury apartment complexes, not condos. This list contains only condominiums, though mixed-use condos are also included. Also, these opinions reflect those only of the author of this article.

Linea
No matter how good a mood I’m in, this compositionally unsettling Safeway Heights condo automatically renders me hopeless and depressed. An aggressive and angular attempt at Modernism, the big glass collection of cubes makes no attempt at harmony. And those cantilevers announce to the neighborhood that they can’t wait to fall on you.
8 Buchanan Street, between Sanchez Street and Noe Street

The Vida, and the newly painted New Mission sign. Photo: Thomas Hawk

VIDA
It looks like the earthquake already hit at The Joker’s hideout known as VIDA, whose form was dubbed “Gangnam style, swagger style” by the Planning Commission’s Kathrin Moore. These disorganized zigzag boxes are detailed with a red and yellow color scheme that seems like a rich white designer’s attempt to convey a Latino feel in homage to those being displaced. This may explain why vandals just can’t resist the place with their “Die slow, rich f**ks” graffiti.
2558 Mission, between 21st Street and 22nd Street

Photo: Allan Ferguson

Millennium Tower
How can we not include the infamously sinking Millennium Tower, whose unsold units and endless lawsuits will make it the butt of jokes for years to come. But let us also rag on its boring, fortress-like proportions that only a Cylon would love to call home. It’s hilarious to think that back in 2012, this sinking stinker made Worth magazine’s World’s Top 10 Residences list.
310 Mission Street, between Beale Street and Fremont Street

Image: Google Street View

Fontana Towers
We direct much of our fire here at the new generation of condos, but these two abominations have been ruining San Francisco views for 55 years. There is somehow no 1960s fun in these monoliths from the 1960s, and not a single interesting material anywhere on the facade. But it’s more the beauty they block than their own inherent ugliness that makes the Fontana Towers reliably among the most reliably irritating eyesores on the skyline — and this development just about single-handedly launched a generation of protesters screaming "No Wall on the Waterfront," by the way.
1000 North Point Street, between Polk Street and Van Ness Street

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

Icon SF
Hey, I’m all for combining different materials to get a nice exterior effect. But this awkward, colorblock monstrosity at Noe Street and 16th Street is a mashup of three different incompatible design ideas that just don’t speak the same architectural language. Adding to the total lack of focus, we have jutty, Tetris-like elements that make the facade more busy and not at all cute.
2299 Market Street, between 16th Street and 17th Street

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

2002 Third Street
There’s plenty of Stanlingrad chic to hate upon out at Mission Bay, but this grain silo concept is particularly bleak. Yes, I’m aware this work was designed by Stanley Saitowitz, who has done remarkable work all over town. But the bunker mentality of these structures just isn’t pleasant, and feels like in this case Saitowitz got conned by a particularly aggressive aluminum siding salesman.
2002 Third Street, between Mariposa Street and 18th Street

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

298 Portola
I’m forever enchanted with the kitschy, old-school motor lodge aesthetic of houses in the Twin Peaks neighborhood. But here we have this completely out-of-scale 80s McMansion that spreads a county jail vibe across an entire huge block of Portola Street. Puke-green bars cover the ground floor windows with ugly asterisks to further add to the overall unwelcomingess.
298 Portola Street, between Clipper Street and Burnett Avenue

Image: Toasty Ken via Flickr

Arterra
What in the Hello Fresh is going on with the Atari 2600 graphics that adorn of the exterior of this Mission Bay collection of slabs? There is all manner of fug going up near the 4th Street and King Street Caltrain station and the ballpark these days, but the inconsistently arranged shower of little orange lasers makes this structure really stand out. Further, it comes across as three differently sized and shaped buildings that were crunched together and just can't find their proper harmony.
300 Berry Street, between 5th Street and the 280

Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

The Century
Visually uninviting and inhumane, The Century makes Market street a lot less pleasant with drab gray paneling and ground-level reflective glass. Those balconies appear too small to be usable, and this building will age even less well than most of the unremovable architectural horrors on Market Street. Because peep those drainhole circles near the parapet, they’ll only get uglier over time as water stains accumulate.
2200 Market, between Sanchez Street and Noe Street

Image: The Palms San Francisco via Facebook

The Palms
Completely overwhelming and incongruous with its surroundings, The Palms is sort of a Walmart attempt at an Art Deco scheme. I’ve seen airport hotels that were more inspired than this, and it hulks over the neighborhood in a way that’s pretentiously out of scale. Just to drive home its ethic of excess, The Palms once offered a studio with 116 parking spaces.
555 4th Street, between Bryant Street and Brannan Street

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Plans are moving along for the tall building high-rise zone at Market Street and Van Ness Avenue, as a roughly 12-block area around that crossroads has been granted higher height allowances by the SF Planning Department. The most notable change could be what you now know as the Honda dealership at 10 South Van Ness Avenue, which Miami-based developer Crescent Heights hopes to turn into the double-tower condo and retail complex seen here on Socketsite and rendered at street level above. That project is currently entering its obligatory environmental impact review with Planning, but SocketSite noticed a little change in plans wherein the developer now wants to include 984 units of housing (a roughly 25 percent increase from the originally proposed 767 units) and a parking garage with 518 spaces (up from 275 parking spaces originally proposed.)

This proposed two-tower development comes in addition to planned towers on all four corners of the intersection, including this one at 30 Otis Street, and this Snohetta-designed tower now going by the One Oak.

Both of the proposed towers would be about 400 feet tall, obviously a massive height increase over the current one-floor Honda dealership. While the rendering above shows different proposed developments, it gives you a sense of things possibly to come with that district’s new height allowances.

As you know, no major San Francisco condominium project is complete without an obnoxious neighborhood nickname rebrand, and the developers of as many as 9,000 new units would like for you to start referring to the Market Street and Van Ness Avenue area as “the Hub District.” (If you’ve already eaten lunch, you may not want to risk vomiting by finding out that The Hub already has a Nextdoor page). But it is a historical throwback nickname, as the Planning Department points out that “From the 1880s through the 1950s, the area of San Francisco near the intersections of Market Street with Valencia, Haight and Gough streets was a well-known and distinct neighborhood called the ‘Market Street Hub’ or simply, ‘The Hub’.”

History aside, longtime locals in this and adjacent neighborhoods are less than thrilled over the effect of these two 41-story towers, plus the impending 40-story luxury high-rise planned at what is now the All-Star Cafe at 1500 Market Street. The push for private parking lots and paid parking spaces may be more of a developer need than a community need. “One of the reasons the developers may have opted for this drastic parking increase, in a city that’s rapidly getting more congested, is money,” Nuala Sawyer notes in SF Weekly. “Charging tenants for car parking spots is a solid source of monthly income.”

Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association president Gail Baugh shares that concern. “The NEMA apartment building at 10th and Market has many parking spaces that are not being used,” she tells SF Weekly. “Why continue to build buildings ignoring transportation forecasts that continue to point toward less car ownership, especially in transit-rich areas?”

If nothing else, these two towers are at least significantly less ugly than many of the other unappealing rectilinear slabs that define the current condominium boom. And Crescent Heights has a Plan B should the double tower design get denied by Planning, the 55-story single tower seen below, via SocketSite, which would hold just as many units as the combined two tower plan would.

Image: SocketSite

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