Investigation by possible developer: the Touchless Carwash
NOPNA got a call from a developer (Pulte, inc) about how they were just thinking about making an offer to the guy who owns the Touchless Carwash at Oak and Divis.
One of the reasons they were calling neighborhood groups was to find out what we thought about their idea of building housing on that spot. (the whole carwash area plus two empty buildings next to it)
Some might say 'yay, no more ugly car wash!' some might say 'yay, more housing!' others might say, 'hey, they employ a lot of people' or 'why should we allow more condos (i.e. rich folks) into the neighborhood?'
One of the major caveats of this -only just thinking about it- development is that in order to 'make it worth their time' they'd have to get the area RE-zoned for higher density... Currently, the area is zoned to support 60 units, the developer would want it to be up to 100, or it's not worth it to them.
When I talked to the guy, I told him some of the standard stuff neighborhood groups want to see: parking issues addressed, bike parking addressed, look and design, traffic flow, support of the community, all the standards.
What do you think?
posted by Tys @ 9:26 AM
11 Comments:
The only reason this developer is able to consider buying the site is that the city and neighbors wouldn't allow the car wash to expand as they wanted, causing the car wash to consider relocating. They wanted to raze those two additional buildings to provide more vehicle storage and office space, as well as reconfiguring the car wash building. I use that car wash and would be disappointed to see it go, personally, even if it was for housing. And we all know how much I love housing!
I have to say that car wash was nice at one point, when it was affordable, but I would not consider its potential departure a great loss for "the hood". Of course, I would like to know more about the development plans before I endorsed any new construction.
It seems like it's only a good idea if we can get a better committment from the developer on more affordable units. The last thing we need in the neighborhood is more $700,000+ condos like we have over at Fulton Market. We need housing affordable to folks who provide critical services in our city and make up a significant portion of the renters in our area. Developers really, really want to build and we need to get more from them.
There will be inevitible backsliding like with the local biz commitments at Fulton Market (a Washington Mutual and yet another nail shop... come on) so it's important to at least start strong.
OK, so I get a car. Where do I wash it? South of here the nearest touchless quality car wash I know of is in Palo Alto (if it still exists).
I have to say that I support more housing but only if it includes a significant amount set aside to be affordable. Currently if a 100 unit building was approved that would only result in a possible 12 affordable units.
In my opinion, that's just not enough and not worth the impact that the new building would have on my neighborhood.
Did you hear about the Beacon housing lottery near SBC Park? It had 4,300 applicants for 20 new condos set aside for affordable housing. Beacon owners Centurion
Partners normally sell units for $500,000 to $1.3 million and The Beacon encompasses two entire city
blocks and 595 homes.
Let’s say each unit was sold for the average price of $1 million. That means Centurion Partners made around $595 Million (give or take a few million) minus the cost of the construction which according to the website was $346 million. That equals $249 million in pure profit! And they set aside 20 units? How is that reasonable?
The demand for housing is huge but the city is letting developers get away with providing next to nothing in return for huge profits. I don't want that to happen in my neighborhood.
Here's a link to an article about the Beacon housing lottery:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/27/BUGVQFEE541.DTL&hw=housing+lottery&sn=001&sc=1000
And heres a link to the beacons website:
http://www.beaconsf.com/
Thank you Alex for your informative post. It's good to get some data and run the numbers to bring home an important point.
As for getting your car washed in the neighborhood, the 76 gas station on Divisadero and Eddy lets two fellows set up their own car wash business every Sat. and Sun. They do a good job, charge A LOT less than Touchless. Check them out sometime...
$249MM in pure profit? Did you count the cost of land acquisition (one whole city block)? The cost of permits? The financing cost? While I do not doubt the developers have made money, I'd say your analysis is incomplete, and thus misleading you to some extent.
I'm baffled by those who think *not* constructing housing will some how magically deter those who make far above the median wage and want to buy in the city from buying. All it will do is continue to prop up housing costs. If you want to keep the apparently undersireable rich out of your neighborhood, you should do everything you can to support the current mega building in SOMA lest the one bedroom TICs in NOPA reach $900K.
Housing will be built, playing NIMBY will only lead to your concerns being ignored.
Housing: good.
Cars: bad.
I for one would prefer to see more housing in this neighborhood, and less cars and car-related industry and traffic that a carwash generates. It seems that most of the customers and employees who pass through Touchless every day are not even members of this community. Not that they're somehow unimportant, but they are not really part of this community that we all care so deeply about. Plenty of car washes in this city in all the industrial/commercial zones where they should be.
And another thing - just about any housing is going to benefit just about everybody seeking housing despite income level. Every new million dollar condo on the market means one fewer buyer in the $900k segment, and so on down the line. If we had more housing, maybe we wouldn't have a housing shortge and prices would be more affordable. One residential building won't solve the whole problem but it will get us a little closer. Less housing is not going to solve any problems.
Oh and another thing - what did we learn by "saving" the Harding Theater? Last I checked we had no movie theater, no housing, no small businesses. We still have a dilapidated graffiti covered building which some would say fits right in the the character of our neighborhood....
Harding Theater hoopla was a red herring.
Like people really knew anything about the old theater.
As independent theaters are dying away, what would be the point of saving what looks from the outside as an eyesore?
The density of people currently on Touchless would exceed the occupancy of a new housing development, I assume!
With commercial storefronts on this property, we can have more small business owners in the area. Redevelopment is a good thing.
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