By Dominic Fracassa Monday, August 21, 2017, San Francisco Chronicle

A cadre of San Francisco officials told a crowd of concerned residents Monday evening that the city is seeking collaborative, permanent solutions to address the public safety issues looming over Dolores Park and the neighborhood surrounding it.

The packed community meeting at Dolores Park Church was convened by Supervisor Jeff Sheehy in the wake of what police are investigating as a gang-related shooting on Aug. 3 that wounded three people, one of whom remains in critical condition.

Representatives from the Police Department, district attorney’s office, parks department and public works highlighted the city’s efforts to enhance safety at the 15-acre park since the shooting, and fielded a range of comments and questions from residents.

Many who spoke at the meeting — including Jeff Kelton, who identified himself as one of the shooting’s victims — expressed concerns about what they see as a rising tide of vagrancy, hard-drug sales and violent activity at the park that’s spilling into the adjacent Mission and Castro neighborhoods.

“Every year — the crime, the homelessness — the little things keep turning into bigger things,” said James Lewis, who said he’s lived in the Castro for 50 years. “It’s the same problems year after year.”

Sheehy, whose District Eight includes Dolores Park, praised the Police Department for stepping up patrols in the area but stressed the importance of acting on broader “strategies that we can implement together that will permanently change the trajectory of what’s happening at the park.”

“We don’t want this to be an episodic event where something bad happens, we respond, and six months later it’s back to where it was,” Sheehy said.

San Francisco Police Capt. Bill Griffin, who leads the Mission Station, said that more uniformed officers are patrolling the park seven days a week and that reports of major criminal activity have fallen since they began.

No suspects have been arrested in the triple shooting, said Police Chief Bill Scott, though the department is “working on a belief” that the incident is connected to another shooting a month ago in which “no one was hit.”

In recent months, the park has been beset by violent altercations that have rattled those who live nearby. In mid-May, a 23-year-old man was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after he was attacked by five assailants who beat him with bottles and a golf club. Last year, a 25-year-old man was stabbed in the torso by a mob of 10 men. The victim didn’t know the men and told police he assumed some were gang members.

Kelton said he was walking through the park when he ran into a “group of kids” near a pedestrian bridge that connects Dolores Park to Church Street when gunshots erupted, hitting him and two others. Kelton expressed his gratitude to the police for their timely response, which he said, “saved his life.” He urged the police to maintain a constant presence at the park, or at least the appearance of one, to deter criminal activity.

Numerous residents referred to the bridge, calling it a magnet for criminal activity and homeless encampments. Recreation and Parks General Manager Phil Ginsburg recommended taking down the bridge, a suggestion that was met with scattered applause.

Lewis, the longtime Castro resident, said he would support mounting cameras around the bridge, “if they led to a solution.” He added that he’s routinely witnessed drug deals taking place at the bridge. “Are they swapping stories about the best steaks at Whole Foods up there? I don’t think so,” Lewis said.

June Castle, who lives near the park, said that while she was gratified there was a public dialogue taking place about the neighborhood’s problems, she felt shortchanged by what she saw as a paucity of concrete solutions by city officials. While there was much talk about fixing the park’s problems, Castle said, there was little offered in the way of specifics.

“I would have liked to have seen more concrete ideas and plans,” Castle said. “It all felt a little vague to me. Dolores is a beautiful place, but lately there have been a lot of issues.”

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa

Upper Market St. Development May Offer 96 New Apartments
Changes are afoot at the corner of Duboce Avenue and Market Street.

By Brad Bailey (Castro Courier)

A proposed mixed-use development at 1965-67 Market Street is one of the many in recent years that could soon be changing the Upper Market landscape. The highly visible site is currently the location of a FedEx Office outlet. David Baker Architects designed the development for Keller Grover Properties, and when finished will have 96 residential units, retail space, and an underground parking garage. Fourteen of the new units will be designated for affordable housing.

The developer still needs the Planning Commission to approve the project but they are optimistic they could break ground as early as next spring.

According to city and state regulations, all buildings constructed over 50 years ago that possess architectural or historical significance can be considered historic resources. The current facade on Market Street fits this requirement, and will remain intact while the new development will be built around it.
David Prowler, project manager of the new development, discussed the projected impact. “We worked very hard to learn from the Market and Octavia plan, [and] that the city and neighborhood associations worked for years to develop a plan that meets the goals of neighborhood residents,” he said.

The Market and Octavia Neighborhood Plan covers Market Street between the Van Ness Avenue and Church Street Muni stations and along Octavia Boulevard. The Plan has been in effect since 2007.

“We’re really happy to say that the project complies with the Market and Octavia Plan,” Prowler said. “We’re working to further the neighborhood’s goals of creating a gateway in that corner, and creating a scale that relates to the buildings around it and to the width of Market Street.”

Prowler said the project preserves the significant elements of the historical building and creates housing at all levels of affordability at a time when the neighborhood needs it most.

Currently, any building along Market Street at that intersection is zoned for development up to 85 feet in height. However, the current parking lot, along Duboce Avenue, is only zoned for 55 feet. Therefore, the project team is utilizing the state’s Density Bonus Law, passed in September 2016. The law enables an increase in height or configuration in order to increase the number of units that are created on a site. This will allow two additional floors to the Duboce Avenue side of the building, making the new structure 75 feet tall.
“What it enables us to do is to push the addition that goes above the historic building way back in order to create a setback that honors the existing building. We’re set back from Market Street property line 35 feet, more than the width of a typical building lot,” he said. “The state density bonus allows us to recapture what would be lost by increasing the height above the existing zoning.”

The current FedEx Office Outlet will be converted but the amount of retail in the development will stay the same, Prowler states. “It’ll go from office and retail to residential to retail,” he said.

Originally, the development was projected to have 80 units. San Francisco’s Inclusionary Housing Program requires developers of projects with 10 or more units to pay an Affordable Housing Fee, or to instead sell or rent a percentage of the units to low or middle income households. The required rate for BMR (below market rate) units for this project is 14.5 percent. However, the additional space allowed by the Density Bonus Law allowed for the addition of 16 units to make a total of 96 units.

To keep the original number of affordable units at the rate of 14.5 percent, they voluntarily added two additional units, making it a total of 14 units that qualify as affordable housing. “We’re applying the local requirement to all the units, even those attributable to the state density bonus, even though we’re not required to,” he said.

Prowler states that the management team made presentations to six or eight neighborhood associations to solicit their input. “Some people have critiques of the design and we’ve made some design changes in response to those critiques,” he said. “The basic use, the scale, the residential mix- we’re doing exactly what it is that people called for in the community-driven Market and Octavia plan.”
Prowler said a crucial component of the development is that the management team are residents of the area. “Just about all of the project team lives or works in the neighborhood,” he said, “One of our goals is to create a project that we can all be proud of.”