‘Communal’ plan for old structure
Family homes to sit atop dance studio, child care center
A historic but longneglected commercial building at Mission and 18th streets in San Francisco is poised to be rejuvenated with a mix of affordable housing, child care and dance.
The dilapidated 1919 structure, a former furniture store that was remodeled with an Art Deco flair in the late 1930s, has been on and off the market for more than a decade as a succession of owners unsuccessfully attempted to redevelop it as a dialysis center, a vegan restaurant, a brewery and an organic grocery store.
Finally the Mission Economic Development Agency, a politically powerful group that often opposes market-rate housing, reached a deal to buy it by collaborating with Dance Mission Theater and the Mission Neighborhood Centers, which will open a child care facility there.
“We are all going in together to do a new model of cooperative living and dancing and taking care of our children,” said Krissy Keefer, executive director of Dance Mission Theater. “It’s going to be very communal.”
The economic development group plans to restore the existing two-story structure and add six more stories for housing. About 40 two- and three-bedroom condo units would be located on the top four floors. They would be for-sale units affordable to families earning about 120 percent of area median income, currently about $138,000 for a household of four.
The seller of the building was Owen van Natta, a former Facebook executive who purchased it for $5 million in 2014, accord-
ing to Mission Local, which first reported the deal.
Clinton Textor and Sanford Skeie, brokers with the San Francisco office of the realty firm Marcus & Millichap, represented him in the sale of the building. They said market-rate developers were scared off by the Mission’s anti-gentrification political environment and that “MEDA was very good to work with.”
“The seller is happy that MEDA got it and that they are going to bring that corner back to life,” said Textor. “It’s an important property in repositioning that area of the Mission.”
The deal caps an extremely active year for the development group. With the newest project, MEDA now has five affordable housing projects in its pipeline, totaling 535 units. The first of these, a senior housing project at 1296 Shotwell St., will break ground in March, said Karoleen Feng, the group’s director of community real estate.
Feng said she has had her eye on 2205 Mission St. for two years. “We had been looking for sites for Dance Mission and Mission Neighborhood Centers,” she said.
The building will be the group’s first home ownership project — the others are rentals — and the first targeting middle-income families rather than low-income folks. Mission Neighborhood Centers is providing some of the project funding, along with two nonprofits: Low Income Investment Fund, a financial intermediary that provides capital for community developments, and the Neighbor to Neighbor fund.
“It’s the first project we are funding on our own,” without the help of the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, said Feng. “We are really going out on a limb in order to keep the Mission as a place for families and nonprofits.”
Keefer said the dance company, currently on 24th Street, had been looking for a new home for several years. “We have been unable to get a lease, and our rent keeps going up,” she said.
About 1,500 people come to the dance center each week for classes and performances, including 400 children. “We are definitely a happening place,” she said.
“The seller is happy that MEDA got it and that they are going to bring that corner back to life.” Clinton Textor of Marcus & Millichap