Booties at the Ready: the Glen Park Market Place lobby, May 24, 2006
The new condos at Glen Park Market Place were open to the public last weekend, two weeks later than the hoped-for opening and roughly eight years since the site's original building was consumed by flames.
The complex has been the source of bitterness, rumor and contentious comments:
•The condos look like public housing in Leipzig circa 1959 ( just what's wrong with that? -Ed.)
•The brickwork is nasty
•They shoudda kept it a parking lot we need parking dammit
•Canyon Market will never open. Walgreens is going in there. Canyon Market is the straw man.
Apparently the condos are nice enough. From our onsite spies:
•They made everyone wear booties!
•The finishes are surprisingly nice (listen for note of begrudging admiration)
•There's no place for the piano in here. But the bedrooms are nice.
•The park in the brochure is not in Glen Park. It's Haas Park in Diamond Heights (mild indignation)
•Nice view. Parking lot, BART station and the freeway. From every room.
We give it a month and no one will remember it hasn't been there for decades. Unless of course, someone burns it down again... and are we the only ones touched by the irony of the Polaris Group marketing condos in a Classic Leftie/Ageing Peacenik San Francisco neighborhood?
· Glen Park Market Place [Polaris Group]
· Polaris Ballistic Missile [The Brookings Institute]
· Library Grocery Condos [Curbed]
· Glen Park Library and Food Court [Curbed]
· How to Turn a Parking Lot into Apartments, a Library, and a Grocery Store the Hard Way [David Prowler, SPUR]