New Whole Foods at Market & Dolores Streets Still Faces Hurdles
Mixed use development at shuttered Ford dealership gets merchant support

By Ted Andersen

Running smoothly for about seven months, plans for a major commercial and residential development along the Market and Octavia corridor must now contend with a number of regulatory hurdles in order to break ground.

The project seeks to revitalize the defunct S&C Ford dealership at 2001 Market St. by adding a Whole Foods grocery store with 80 residential housing units above. The Prado Group, a San Francisco-based real estate and development firm, acquired the land in July 2006 and then entered a lease with Whole Foods in November 2008 for retail operations and occupancy. Yet, the Ford building still sits vacant at the corner of Market and Dolores streets, at the junction of the Castro and Upper Market, Mission Dolores and Duboce Triangle neighborhoods.

An environmental review must be completed along with a public hearing before the Planning Commission for entitlements, according to Lawrence Badiner, zoning administrator assistant director for the SF Planning Department. Prado must also secure conditional use permits for several code sections including formula retail, lot size, use size and parking. Even if the Planning Commission approves the project, according to Badiner, the entitlements or the environmental review could be appealed, all prior to submitting the building permits to the Planning Department and the Building Department.

“The project is under environmental review by the (Planning) Department. We are awaiting revised plans and additional information to help review the project,” Badiner wrote in an e-mail. “If everything goes well, we expect a hearing before the Planning Commission around the end of this year.”

The City’s Market Octavia Plan encourages high-density housing along Market Street, according to Badiner, and the City has lost a number of grocery stores in recent years. “This project would further the housing goals and could provide a new grocery in that area, expanding the range of supermarkets in the Upper Market, Noe Valley and Hayes Valley/Lower Haight area,” he wrote.

The project would replace the building and adjacent parcel residential buildings with a 185,418 gross square footage mixed use development: 29,715-gross square footage retail grocery with six floors of residential condominiums, 15 percent of which is expected to be affordable housing and two subsurface parking levels. Residents will park in the dedicated 60 space residential garage that enters on 14th Street at a ratio of .75 spaces per residential unit, and retail parking would include 65 spaces.

Tony Smorgon, an executive with the Prado Group, Inc., hopes that groundbreaking could take place by August 2010, with the grocery store opening by early 2012 and completion of the residential units later that year, assuming Planning Commission approvals in late summer.

“Obviously, the state of the economy, turmoil in the financing markets, the high costs of building and high development impact fees could impact our feasibility and start date,” Smorgon wrote in an e-mail. “Being pre-leased to Whole Foods Market helps our project feasibility when compared to housing-only projects.”

The planned residential development will consist of condominiums that may be leased out as rentals.

Prado representatives have been contacting community organizations and giving presentations, going so far as to create a web site, www.2001marketsf.com, which details the project’s specifics.
“We are continuing to refine the design of the building in response to comments we have received through our meetings with local stakeholder groups and appear to be down to the short strokes,” Smorgon wrote.

The project won endorsement from the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro at their June 4 meeting, and Prado has also met with the Mission Dolores Neighborhood Association (MDNA) and the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association (DTNA).

“MUMC’s membership voted 42-1 in favor of the project because it takes a closed dealership and turns it into a market with condos and brings life to that corner,” MUMC President Steve Adams said. “The Prado Group has done an excellent job of reaching out to neighborhood groups and working with their concerns.”

Dennis Richards, president of the DTNA, said that Prado had been very accessible regarding discussing the actual plans with community organizations. The only issue with the design, he said, was the placement of the actual entrance.

“The real stickler for us was the corner entrance,” Richards said. “They met a lot of the other stuff we had talked about in the winter. But the design they presented to us in March still showed the entrance on Market Street, and it kind of cut off Dolores Street as an active place to be. It’s going to create a place where people will go and hang out and engage with each other. It will become another a mini-main street. Right now that side of Dolores Street is just dead. The whole area is dead.”

Prado meets with MDNA at their meeting on July 8, with Castro Area Planning and Action on July 9, with the SF Housing Action Coalition on July 22 and with Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association Transport and Planning Committee on July 28.

For more information, visit 2001marketsf.com.

Copyright 2009 Castro Courier