Criticism of mall housing project: too small Pressure grows throughout state for adding units
When the owners of Stonestown Galleria unveiled plans last month to build 2,900 units of housing on the mall’s underutilized parking lots, a few nearby homeowners complained that the project would create traffic jams and overwhelm the adjacent singlefamily homes.
But the vast majority of the criticism did not come from neighbors who thought the proposal was too big. It came from those who argued it should be a lot bigger.
“At least 20X too small,” tweeted one reader responding to a Chronicle story breaking the news. Others wrote: “way too small,” “go taller,” “four more floors!” Another suggested those who feel the proposal lacks ambition should post pictures of Oakland rapper Too $hort.
With the Bay Area’s housing shortage now at a crisis point for nearly a decade, developers of large projects increasingly have a fine line to walk. On the one hand, they are under pressure to maximize density in order to create as many homes as possible. At the same time, projects need to be politically realistic — acceptable to city planners and residents and not so full of costly public benefits that it is economically unfeasible.
At Stonestown, developer Brookfield Properties is proposing a project that would retain the current mall, which covers about 12 acres of the property, while redeveloping the 30 acres of sur
face parking lots, which are rarely more than 55% full. In addition to 2,900 housing units in 13 buildings, the project will have a town commons, a retaillined main street and 6 acres of parks.
In terms of density, the project weighs in at 97 units per acre. That is denser than the Balboa Reservoir proposal, approved in August, which calls for 1,100 units, or 63 per acre. But Stonestown is less dense than several other recently approved projects: the Power Station project, just to the south of Pier 70, will include 2,600 homes on 23 acres, about 113 per acre; and India Basin, a 15acre waterfront parcel in BayviewHunters Point, which calls for 101 units per acre.
The Stonestown proposal comes as the state is increasing pressure to produce housing. The recently released draft of the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, which is a blueprint to how many housing units California cities are expected to produce, says that San Francisco needs to plan for a 22% increase in households, or 82,000 more units, between 2023 and 2031. That’s up from an allocation of about 29,000 during the current eightyear cycle, which ends next year.
As cities scramble to meet those housing production goals, regional malls and shopping centers are likely to become a bigger source of housing, according to Teresa Ruiz of Thomas Cox Architects. Shopping centers have large surface parking lots that are easily developed. And unlike other big development opportunities — military bases, shuttered factories, obsolete railyards, gas stations — malls don’t come with extensive environmental cleanup.
Laurie Moffet Fehlberg, a senior principal with Dahlin Group Architecture, said the Stonestown project “got it right” as far as density. “This is 30 acres of asphalt in an area that already has a lot going for it,” she said. “It’s got light rail. It’s next to a university. It’s got the personality, retail, entertainment.”
There is a big difference between getting a project approved and ensuring that it can be built, according to Chris Meany of Wilson Meany, which is redeveloping Treasure Island as well as the 83acre former Bay Meadows horse race track in San Mateo.
At Bay Meadows, which is 80% completed, Meany appeased residents by sticking to existing 55foot limits. That meant that the density is modest — about 1,116 units, or 14 per acre. He also agreed to 18 acres of open space, split between smaller neighborhood green spaces and a large regional park with pond, walking paths and soccer fields. The project also has a campus for a private school and 763,000 square feet of office space.
The concessions at Bay Meadows helped Meany defeat a ballot initiative that would have killed the development. So far about 80% of the housing has been completed — the biggest source of new housing in San Mateo County in the past decade.
“I am an advocate for quality housing that gets built and is good for the community,” Meany said. “We are not going to solve the housing crisis by getting units entitled. We are going to solve the housing crisis by getting units built.”
Meany said that the reality is that density is largely determined by the political clout and resources of neighborhood opponents. Rather than put the most housing where it ought to be built — as close as possible to mass transit, jobs, schools and retail — it ends up being built in the areas least resistant to development. Wealthy neighborhoods with the money and sophistication to fight development end up pushing it into areas with a less powerful constituency.
“We actually allocate it in inverse relationship to the wealth of the community,” Meany said.
The Power Station, which lies to the south of Pier 70 at the foot of Potrero Hill, was zoned for industrial uses when it was bought by Associate Capital. The existing zoning would have allowed the developer to build about 1 million square feet of warehouse space — a hot real estate sector due to the explosion of Amazon and online shopping.
While it would have been profitable and easy, a distribution center was not something that Associate Capital was interested in. They wanted a mix of office, biotech and housing. While the group originally looked at the residential being 50% of the development, eventually they increased that number to 64%, ending up with a project that will feature 2,600 units, 1.5 million square feet of commercial space, and about 7 acres of open space.
“Density and urban form are a very complicated dance with all projects, especially large master developments like the Power Station,” said Enrique Landa, a partner at Associate Capital. “It takes a lot of listening, creative thinking and hard work. In the end, you hope you have something that gets built and delivers on the promises made to the community.”
At Balboa Reservoir — a pavedover 17acre parking lot next to City College of San Francisco — the 63 units per acre faced opposition from Westwood Park homeowners who had defeated several efforts to build housing there over the past 30 years. Sam Moss, executive director of the nonprofit Mission Housing, which is part of the development team led by Bridge Housing, said that he faced widespread questions from “the densityordie” housing advocates who felt that the project should be two or three times denser.
“Could Balboa Reservoir have been more dense? Of course,” Moss said. “But the project we got approved is three times more dense than anyone had ever proposed for that site. We are making progress.”