San Francisco Approves Stonestown Galleria Urban Village

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has unanimously approved a development agreement to convert the parking lots surrounding the Stonestown Galleria into an urban village with thousands of units of housing and a pedestrian-friendly town square.

The project, which will develop 30 acres of surface parking lots, is set to include 3,500 new residential units in buildings ranging from four-story townhomes to 18-story apartment towers, including a 200-unit senior village.

In addition to a town square, there will be six acres of parks and a plaza to host a neighborhood farmer’s market. About 20% of the housing in the development will be below market rate, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

A new 20th Avenue will bisect the center of the property, with 150K SF of shops, restaurants and entertainment. Parking garages and underground parking facilities will replace the surface parking lots that will serve as the site for the development.

According to the Chronicle, the Stonestown Galleria development will be the largest residential development on San Francisco’s west side in more than half a century.

Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who represents the neighborhood and introduced the resolution approving the development, called the project “a very large down payment into the housing we are required to build on the west side of town”—a reference to the city’s state-mandated housing element plan, which requires San Francisco to build 82K new housing units by 2031.

Infrastructure for the Stonestown project, including new streets, utilities and parks, will be funded through an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District (EIFD), which allows for reinvestment of net new property tax revenue generated in the area by the development.

The project will be built in phases, with the first one including infrastructure improvements and four-story townhomes on the northwest portion of the site. The mall will remain open throughout construction.

In April, Stonestown Galleria owner Brookfield reached an agreement with the city to designate 20% of the units to develop about 700 affordable homes.

Earlier this year, the Board of Supervisors reduced the percentage of affordable housing that developers are obligated to include in projects from 23.5% to between 12% and 16%, depending on the size of the project, to spur more development.

Brookfield first proposed a $2B redevelopment of the huge parking area surrounding the 775K SF indoor mall more than two years ago. The original plans, which preserve the 70-year-old mall, also envisioned a hotel, which was dropped as the amount of housing in the project was increased.