899 Valencia Street [Photo Credit: Planning Department via Mission Local]
Earlier this week, Mission Local ran a piece about 899 Valencia, a proposed 18-unit condominium on the site of a former gas station/parking lot/eyesore at Valencia and 20th Street. The article's worth a read as a comprehensive guide to empty lots on Valencia Street, projects stalled either by the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, lack of construction financing, or a collapsed economy- the usual suspects. 899 Valencia ran into another obstacle, the land-use (or land-use-prevention) lawyer Sue Hestor:
The sole opposition to the development is from long-time anti-development attorney Sue Hestor, who filed an appeal to the project’s mitigated negative declaration on behalf of the Mission-based nonprofit People Organized to Demand Environmental and Economic RightsNo one's been evicted here- she'd sue a tuna can if it opened the wrong way- but the argument remains that poor people are damaged and displaced by any kind of development. The Planning Commission voted on the project yesterday and approved all three items involved 7-0: the Mitigated Negative Declaration was upheld, the Conditional Use Request and the "no net adverse shadow". The boxy project's 52 feet high in a 55-foot zone and not exactly an architectural triumph, but we're so over that empty lot. Mission "Progressives" are up against two other adversaries besides developers- the private transport companies that will ferry Valencia Corridor "Hipsters" to their high-paying jobs down the Peninsula, and the rapacious San Francisco Association of Realtors, expanding the boundaries of Noe Valley into the Mission every two years as they re-map the neighborhoods.
· More Condos For Valencia [Mission Local]
· The Two Sues: Hand-to-Hand Combat in the NIMBY Trenches [Curbed SF]
· Gentrification: What's In A Name? [Curbed SF]
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