Posted on: March 10, 2025
Source: San Francisco Chronicle; Author: J. K. Dineen
Customers are seen inside a packed Java On Ocean Cafe, a longtime neighborhood institution, on Ocean Avenue in the Ingleside neighborhood.
A mural is seen along Ocean Avenue.
In the nine years since they opened Ocean Ale House just west of City College in San Francisco’s Ingleside neighborhood, Daniel Silberman and Miles Escobedo have been hearing about the massive new development coming to the Balboa Reservoir.
They learned about the 1,100 housing units planned for the 17-acre lot, with 550 affordable apartments and 550 market-rate. They followed news of the 2017 developer selection competition, the 2020 development agreement with the city and the 2022 sale of the property, which had been owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, to master developer Bridge Housing for $11.4 million.
There has been a pandemic, a global shift in workplace habits, the 2017 death of Mayor Ed Lee, the six-year tenure of Mayor London Breed and the election of Mayor Daniel Lurie in November. Like other commercial strips in the city, Ocean Avenue has been pockmarked with new retail vacancies — losing Target, CVS and, most recently, Walgreens.
Yet, despite all the change, one thing has remained constant: Construction has not started on the 17-acre surface parking lot just west of the City College campus.
“We have been hearing about this project for a decade, so it doesn’t feel real,” Escobedo said. “We have been let down so many times.”
The Balboa Reservoir and the Westwood Park neighborhood in San Francisco, in 2018. For a decade, the site has been said to be in development.
That is about to change. It may be of only a little consolation for Ocean Ale House — a warm, neighborhood-centric hangout known for live jazz and an excellent crab sandwich — but after years of delays, master developer Bridge Housing is set to start construction this spring on the project’s first 100% affordable complexes: the 128-unit, $80 million “Building E,” according to city officials. Six months later Bridge Housing is slated to begin work on “Building A,” a 159-unit affordable building. Build E secured a $62 million from the state, $26 million in infill infrastructure grant and $36 million in affordable housing and sustainable communities money.
Both communities will face the new Lee Street — named after the late mayor — which will be built simultaneously with the housing. The tree-lined, bike-friendly Lee Street will be the main entrance into the new Balboa Reservoir neighborhood and serve as a division between the residential community and City College, where a $141 million student success center is under construction.
The infrastructure work creating new streets, sidewalks and utilities for the first phase of the project will cost about $30 million. Unlike megaprojects such as Pier 70, Treasure Island and Potrero Power Station — where the infrastructure work has preceded residential development — at Balboa Reservoir, both the housing and “vertical” work will be done at the same time.
“Having the infrastructure in place will be a really good momentum generator for this project,” said Anne Taupier, who heads up development for the city’s office of economic and workforce development.
It’s been a rocky five-year journey from approvals to shovels-in-ground.
Originally, Phase 1 of the project was supposed to include half affordable units developed by Bridge Housing, Mission Housing and Habitat for Humanity; and half market-rate units built by AvalonBay. It was supposed to start in 2022, with residents moving in by late 2024.
But rising interest rates and construction costs combined to make the market-rate units infeasible and the project stalled out, prompting Bridge and the city to change course and make the first phase 100% subsidized apartments.
In January 2023, AvalonBay paused its part of the project “due to the downturn in market conditions for the townhomes that would have helped fund the horizontal work,” according to a 2024 city report. In addition, the development team led by Bridge was experiencing “significant staff turnover” resulting in “a lack of institutional knowledge for the project,” according to the report.
A pedestrian walks past a shuttered storefront on Ocean Avenue.
The first building will be seven stories with rents between 30% and 80% of area median income — between about $60,000 and $120,000 for a family of four. It will have 56 one-bedrooms, 40 two-bedrooms and 32 three-bedrooms. There will be one-to-one bike parking, but no car parking. Patricia Centeno of BAR Architects, which is designing Building A with YA Studio, said the two buildings would anchor Ed Lee Avenue.
“Our concept has been focused on the idea that this is a gateway building, kitty corner from Unity Plaza and the future Ed Lee Avenue,” she said.
Christian Martin, executive director of the Ocean Avenue Association, said he was “thrilled” that construction is finally starting.
“I think we are all happy to hear they are finally breaking ground on some much-needed housing,” Martin said, “A project that is slated to bring more residents and foot traffic to the corridor will obviously help the businesses.”
Ocean Avenue experienced a bit of a boom between 2010 and 2018, a surge of investment anchored by a 179-unit apartment complex above a Whole Foods on the site of an old auto parts store just east of the Ocean Ale House. That was followed by a 71-unit affordable project at 1100 Ocean, 27 apartments above retail on McDonald’s old overflow parking lot, and 15 units at a former gas station at 1490 Ocean Ave.
Since then it has been a mixed bag for the corridor, with major retail closures along with some local businesses taking advantage of depressed rents. The three prominent store closures — CVS at 1760 Ocean, Walgreens at 1630 Ocean and Target at 1830 Ocean — left large vacancies that will be hard to fill at a time when few retailers are looking for more than 5,000 square feet.
A mural is seen on a wall at the former Walgreens along Ocean Avenue.
An application to redevelop the historic El Rey theater at 1970 Ocean Ave. —— it calls for restoring the theater, adding a scuba diving school and building 42 units of housing in a rear parking lot — was submitted in 2021, but has not been approved. The initial “preliminary project application” has expired, according to planning staff, and it’s been a couple of years since the property owner has been in contact with the city about moving forward.
In addition, a site that could accommodate 70 units at 1601-1633 Ocean Ave. is currently for sale, while several businesses that were on the block, including the Ave Bar, have been shuttered
Martin said “we are doing a lot better than a lot of other corridors from a vacancy standpoint” and his organization is working with the city to “help recruit another drugstore or community positive business” to the Walgreens site.
“Walgreens was the major topic of our last board meeting,” he said. “It’s not great news, but what are you going to do?”
Meanwhile there have been some encouraging openings in the last year, including Charm Coffee Shop at 1939 Ocean and Taishan Cuisine at 1155 Ocean.
Meanwhile at Ocean Ale House, Silberman and Escobedo have learned that they can’t count on neighborhood growth to pay the bills, instead focusing on serving existing residents. The partners — both musicians who met at San Francisco’s Ruth Asawa School of the Arts — were among the few keeping their spots open throughout the pandemic, both working overtime to stay afloat, with Silberman in the kitchen and Escobedo the front of house.
An aerial view of the Westwood Park neighborhood adjacent to Balboa Reservoir is seen in San Francisco.
The pub is a gathering place for teachers from a wide range of schools — Lick-Wilmerding High School, Archbishop Riordan High School, Aptos Middle School, Lowell High School, City College — and the Ale House hosts community events and fundraisers. Its clientele represents an unusually eclectic cross section of S.F. neighborhoods: from the exclusive St. Francis Wood to economically and racially diverse areas like Ocean View and Ingleside.
“We are a confluence of everything — from the ultimate St. Francis Wood kind of wealth and every step down economically down the ladder and across the tracks,” Silberman said.
Escobedo said locals are concerned about the fact that the first phase of development at Balboa Reservoir doesn’t have any parking and that traffic could get worse on already-congested Ocean Avenue. But the additional neighbors will ultimately be a good thing, he said.
“It’s going to bring more business,” he said. “And the idea of affordable housing is something we support. We are watching a lot of friends who are working-class in the service industry fully getting priced out of the city.”
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