A sign that S.F. is digging out of rough year
Over the past year the ceremonial groundbreaking, where politicians and developers put on shiny hard hats and celebrate the city’s latest real estate milestone by flinging ceremonial dirt with ceremonial shovels, has vanished into the COVID abyss.
But on Thursday, in a sign that the city could be starting to return to some sense of normal, Mayor London Breed and other City Hall officials gathered on a construction site just south of Market Street in masks to mark the redevelopment of a quintessential San Francisco megadevelopment that has something for everyone: a new union hall for Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 38, 96 units of supportive housing for the formerly homeless, a park for the neighborhood and hundreds of market rate apartments that will sprout from a patchwork of surface parking lots.
The project will be made up of five buildings, which will total 595 housing units. The portion of the project being celebrated Thursday is 53 Colton St., the supportive housing for the formerly unhoused, which will open in 2023.
“Our homeless recovery plan means we are transitioning people out of hotel rooms and shelters into permanent situations. This is what it’s all about,” Breed said. “So I am really glad to be here. Hell, I’m glad to be anywhere nowadays.”
The project is the realization of a vision the late plumber union boss Joseph Mazzola had four decades ago. At that time, the union started buying up lots around the 1600 block of Market Street, hoping one day to built a mixeduse project with a new union hall. Today his grandson, Larry Mazzola Jr., is the Local 38 business manager and has been spearheading the project for the union.
The development, which will take about three years to complete, broke ground in June, the only major project to start during the coronavirus era. For San Francisco’s trade workers, the timing has been fortuitous as it has kept a sizable portion of workers on the job at a time when the plumbers have 15% unemployment, Mazzola said. About 300 of the union’s members are currently between jobs.
“Some of our guys have been out of work a year — it’s tough,” said Mazzola. “In the last three months, it really took a dip. There is stuff on the horizon but a lot of the developers are waiting until the summer when the vaccine kicks in more.”
Prior to speaking, the mayor and Supervisor Matt Haney lined up with the developers, which include Strada Investment Partners and Community Housing Partnership. They held silverplated shovels with wooden handles. The shovels were engraved with “Groundbreaking Ceremony Local 38” and the date July 7, 2020 — when the original ceremony was planned.
Instead the celebration came two days after the city reopened several segments of its economy — movie theaters, indoor dining and museums — and numbers are significantly down in the city’s COVID hospital wards.
With bulldozers and pile drivers in the background, ready to start the real digging, Breed took her position at a podium with the city seal on it.
“I gotta say it’s nice to be outside — with people,” said Breed. “Just because we are in the middle of a pandemic doesn’t mean we should stop building more housing.”
Haney, who was wearing his white sneakers along with a Zoomappropriate formal sport coat, said it felt strange to be outside with so many other people: “It almost feels like it’s 2019.”