San Francisco has an undersupply of housing and an oversupply of shuttered pharmacies. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
A year after Walgreens announced that it was closing a dozen stores in San Francisco, architects and brokers are saying that those locations would be ideal for new homes.
The sites are plentiful, they’re often in desirable neighborhoods with limited land, and many are corner lots in commercial corridors where developers can build additional housing via state density bonus laws.
Moreover, it’s daunting to make a historical preservation argument for a place that had been selling shampoo and Q-tips.
Align Real Estate has provided a loose blueprint with its plans to redevelop Safeway sites across the city, but that doesn’t mean the boarded-up CVS down the street will be converted into a 25-story tower like the one planned for the Marina.
“A typical Walgreens site is much smaller than a Safeway with a huge surface parking lot, so you’re likely looking at a neighborhood-size development,” said Mark Hogan, an architect who published a blog post (opens in new tab) on his firm’s website about the potential of turning chain store sites into housing. “The footprint of a Walgreens store is not gonna support a high rise.”
Walgreens did not respond to a request for comment. The company does not necessarily own the sites where it used to operate stores.
Hogan, the principal at OpenScope Studios, said developments at derelict Rite-Aids would likely look more like the Sunset apartments built over a Gus’s Community Market than like the proposed 67-story tower above an old Honda dealership on Van Ness.
But around the corner from the Honda site is a former Walgreens that owners hope could sprout a huge mixed-use development. The Post Street property is listed (opens in new tab) for $20 million by the broker BLVD Real Estate Investment Co.; its director, Riley Hanson, said the site has attracted potential buyers who want to build. The listing says the site could support up to 868 units.
To Hanson, converting closed stores into housing is common sense. To state the obvious, building a place for someone to live is a higher and better use than a closed eyesore.
It used to be easy for neighbors to kneecap proposed developments they didn’t like, but those days are largely over, thanks to a raft of laws by state Sen. Scott Weiner and other YIMBY-aligned legislators.
San Francisco supervisors approved Mayor Daniel Lurie’s rezoning plan in December, raising height limits in most of the city, especially along major corridors.
The three horsemen — labor costs, material costs, and borrowing costs — still inhibit development in San Francisco, despite myriad changes to permitting and zoning. But housing proponents say that if developers can get lenders on board for projects atop old drug stores, then the sky is the limit.
“If people decide they want to make this happen, you could probably have shovels in the ground in under two years,” Hogan said.
When it closed its stores in San Francisco, Walgreens blamed “increased regulatory and reimbursement pressures.” In other words: high costs. While brazen shoplifting has been raised as another factor putting pressure on pharmacies, Walgreens executives walked back (opens in new tab) their emphasis on theft prevention (opens in new tab) and acknowledged that locking up products had harmed sales. (opens in new tab)
The closures contributed to the city’s pharmacy deserts — neighborhoods where residents have to travel to pick up prescriptions. Last year, the Bayview lost its only Walgreens, to the outrage and dismay of residents who relied on the location for medications.
Months later, the site remains empty (opens in new tab), waiting for someone to do something.