Ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable: An apartment tower with hundreds of units rising above Fort Mason. The wealthy homeowners of the Marina would surely have rallied together to save their bay views with little more than angry emails and a few speeches at public hearings.
Today, there’s not much they can do.
Align Real Estate’s proposal to build a 25-story building on the site of the Marina Safeway appears to comply with the law. The developer, by all accounts, has the money to build it. And neighbors no longer have bureaucratic monkey wrenches like discretionary review appeals to throw into the process and halt the behemoth.
This enormous power shift is the result of a raft of state laws like Senate Bill 423, which in 2023 eliminated discretionary review for most projects that comply with zoning, and the state density bonus, which allows developers to cram more units into certain projects if a certain number of them are affordable. With these “Yes in my backyard” policies in force, Marina residents are left with little legal recourse.
That’s not to say there’s no resistance. Lori Brooke, a District 2 supervisor candidate and leader of the anti-development group Neighborhoods United San Francisco, said she is working to rally the troops.
“We will organize residents to apply intense public pressure on Safeway and Align Real Estate,” Brooke said. “This means circulating petitions, holding events that draw attention, and creating ways that residents can have their serious concerns actually heard.”
Whether focused outrage would be sufficient to stop the project is unclear. Safeway’s deal with Align includes a total of four San Francisco sites where the developer plans to build an apartment complex at the site of a grocery store. (The others are in the Outer Richmond, Bernal Heights, and the Fillmore; in all locations but the Fillmore, the developments will include revamped groceries on the ground floor.) Safeway, which stands to benefit from the construction of larger stores, is unlikely to spike the agreement. Align is even less likely to budge, especially in a moment when developers are more lauded than derided for audacious proposals.
Rendering of the Marina Safeway apartment tower. | Source: Courtesy Arquitectonica
“Barring her acquiring rights to that site or somehow persuading Safeway that they shouldn’t redevelop, there’s nothing she can do,” Alex Lantsberg, who sits on the SF Housing Stability Fund Oversight Board, said of Brooke. Align, Lantsberg says, has “a site, they have a legal right, they have willing clients, and they have money, so I don’t know what’s going to stop them.”
Not everyone is so certain. Former supervisor and YIMBY boogeyman Dean Preston pointed to Parcel K, a plot in Hayes Valley that was slated for affordable housing until residents said they preferred the outdoor gym and beer garden currently occupying the space.
“There literally were no barriers to moving forward there, except that some well-connected, well-off neighbors who were close to the mayor just torpedoed it,” Preston said. “You can change whatever state laws you want. You can take away people’s rights to appeal. But at the end of the day, when some well-off and connected folks in a neighborhood have an ally in City Hall, there’s quite a bit that can be done to obstruct the development.”
End of an era
The debate over the Safeway project has exposed fractures in the nascent YIMBY coalition.
“I’m as YIMBY as they come,” Adam Nathan, an AI startup founder, wrote in a much-ridiculed X post (opens in new tab). “But 25 stories in a neighborhood where everything is 3 to 4 stories seems excessive.”
His hedging drew criticism. “‘Yes in my backyard’ means you gotta say yes when it’s in your backyard,” said Jane Natoli, organizing director of SF YIMBY. “There have been a couple of [YIMBYs] who have been tepid and said things that I’ve been like, that’s embarrassing. We’re gonna take your card back.”
Nathan did not respond to requests for comment.
District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill called the development “outrageous” and “cartoonish” — a stance that drew criticism from both Natoli and Preston. In an Instagram video (opens in new tab), Preston accused Sherrill of hypocrisy for supporting the Safeway redevelopment in the Fillmore, a historically Black neighborhood, but not in the Marina, a rich, mostly white one. Preston pointed out that SF YIMBY endorsed Sherrill in his supervisor contest against Brooke, though the group could have withheld endorsement altogether.
Sherrill estimated that 90% of his constituents oppose the proposal and said 68% of Marina residents are renters.
“I have been clear that a 25-story building there is not in keeping with all the work we did to formulate the Family Zoning Plan,” Sherrill said. “The Family Zoning Plan is a great way to expand the ability to build housing, and it keeps neighborhood voices centric.”
Mayor Daniel Lurie previously said (opens in new tab) Align was “trying to sneak in a project right before the Family Zoning Plan takes effect,” which violated the spirit that produced the plan. But when asked, he didn’t say whether he would work behind the scenes to nuke the proposal.
‘F— off, you’re in D2′
Some progressives are happy to watch those to their right duke it out over the proposed development.
“Any time the SF mods are stumbling to keep their fractious coalition of law-and-order NIMBYs and ideologically fanatical YIMBYs together, that’s gonna be a LOL from me,” tenant organizer Shanti Singh said in a text message.
Progressives have steered clear of the fight in part because the Marina is so well off. In lower-income neighborhoods, a coalition of convenience between NIMBYs and anti-gentrification activists has either stopped or reshaped market-rate proposals like the so-called Monster in the Mission. In the Marina, however, they’ve been watching from the sidelines.
“It’s like, F— off, you’re in D2,” said Peter Stevens of affordable housing developer TODCO Group. “Let them build rich housing in rich areas.”
A representative of the San Francisco Tenants Union who asked to remain anonymous echoed this ambivalence.
“There’s nobody being harmed by that, except the shoppers who will temporarily have their Safeway closed,” the person said. “Just don’t displace people, and then you can do what you want.”
Both added that the real progressive criticism of the project is that it doesn’t include enough affordable units. (Preston said the same.)
As for Brooke’s petition crusade, few besides Preston think she has any chance of stopping the project. But either way, her quest could be a good way to gain her neighbors’ support. The Tenants Union representative said Brooke has secured labor endorsements because she listens to her would-be constituents.
“A politician’s job is to be like, ‘I feel ya!’” the person said.
What next?
At the Marina Safeway last week, elderly shoppers teetered through the parking lot as container ships and sailboats crossed the Golden Gate behind them. The bay glimmered, and white houses dotted the Tiburon hillside beyond. Joggers on “the West Coast’s sluttiest mile” proved that the Marina still deserves its reputation as the Lululemon capital of NorCal.
Many shoppers had not heard that their grocery store could close temporarily for redevelopment. Others were unfamiliar with the recent YIMBY laws passed in Sacramento. The most common concern wasn’t that the neighborhood would be ruined, or that property values would decrease, but that shoppers would have to travel farther to buy groceries.
“It’s the only major supermarket for miles,” said Tony, a retiree who declined to provide his last name. But Tony, who said he was born in San Francisco and has lived in the Marina for more than 30 years, isn’t fully opposed to the development. “We need more housing.”
The Marina District is one of San Francisco’s wealthiest neighborhoods. | Source: simonkr via Getty
Retired physician Ken Stampfer, who moved to the neighborhood from Boston five years ago, said the store’s closure would be a “huge disruption.” He said that while he supports affordable housing and the Family Zoning Plan, the proposal is “totally out of proportion to the neighborhood.”
Lisa Sutton, a retired psychologist, said four or six stories would be fine. But at more than 20 floors, “this is just gonna be grotesque,” she said.
But whether residents like it or not, the project proves that the power dynamics in housing politics have fundamentally changed. Unless the mayor puts his political capital behind saving the neighborhood Safeway, the store will likely close its doors, and shoppers will have to drive two miles west to the North Beach location. The only challenge left then will be to build the damn thing.