After a bruising, seat-of-the-pants victory in the District 5 supervisor race, Dean Preston is pulling together his to-do list. Once he’s sworn in next week, he’ll try to do what his predecessor Vallie Brown could not pull off: Make immediate use of the 38,000-square-foot former McDonald’s where Haight Street meets Golden Gate Park.
As The Frisc reported in July, the city has funds in place for a youth-focused Navigation Center — a more comprehensive version of a homeless shelter — and the old McDonald’s site seems ideal. It is now city property and will eventually become at least 120 units of affordable housing. But it’s mostly a parking lot now and could be empty for a few years. Navigation Centers are meant to be temporary.
During the campaign, Preston, a tenants rights advocate who lost a close race to London Breed in the 2015 District 5 race, criticized the city for inertia. “We’ve basically had a Navigation Center promised for four years and nothing to show for it. I don’t think it takes that many years.” (The city bought the McDonald’s site, known as 730 Stanyan, in 2017.)
Now Preston, a Democratic Socialist and part of a majority “progessive” bloc on the Board of Supervisors, has a chance to deliver. “When I get into office, I hope we can turn up the heat and work together to pressure the city to use this space,” Preston said at a community meeting Wednesday night at a public library one block from the McDonald’s.
Preston tied the use of the site, known as 730 Stanyan, to homelessness — “it just seems tragic given what we’re facing right now in the city, particularly in terms of homelessness right now” — but stopped short of calling specifically for a Navigation Center there. (The Frisc contacted Preston’s office repeatedly to ask if he would push for a Navigation Center at the site. We did not receive a response by press time.)
The idea was certainly in the air at Wednesday’s meeting. Residents are eager to see better temporary use. “The city has prioritized parking over people,” said Mary Howe of the Homeless Youth Alliance. “I don’t care if there are services there I don’t like. I’d just like to see the spot used for the community.”
Many attendees left the event in frustration. One year ago, the mayor’s office of housing asked for proposals for interim use. One included a youth drop-in center, an outdoor theater, an urban farm, an art garden, and services for seniors. Another proposal — modeled on the PROXY project on Octavia in Hayes Valley — included family services and a mini field with recreation provided by Street Soccer USA-SF teach kids the game and life skills.
The city went with the soccer pitch, but only briefly. When Proposition A, the affordable housing bond went on the November 2019 ballot, interim plans were put on hold because, as Brown told The Chronicle in August, the bond’s passage would speed up construction of the permanent building and make the window for temporary use too narrow. (Proposition A won handily last month.) “Because there was a bond, we had to put everything on pause … that one has left me scratching my head for about eight months,” Preston said Wednesday night.
Does that mean the affordable housing, so desperately needed in the city, will arrive faster than expected at 730 Stanyan? Preston is up for re-election in 2020, so he’s itching to make good on what he ran on — building 100 percent affordable housing on public land.
But Wednesday’s meeting shed little light. The city manager in charge of the project, Jonathan Gagen, is relatively new on the job and had trouble answering questions, particularly on the interim-use debate.
He did say, however, that demolition of the old McDonald’s building itself, an obstacle to interim use, could happen this spring after PG&E is finished removing electric wiring in January. (That said, it’s not the first time the city has set a demolition timeline for the site.)
“Once you get the green light, you can get something built and running very quickly.”
— Incoming District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston
Gagen also said the nonprofit developer of the permanent site should be announced at the end of this month. Once this is done, Gagen said, “The first marching order will be to go to the community to engage on interim and permanent use.”
There’s no timeline for the permanent housing. Will the interim window be wide enough to build a temporary Navigation Center? Preston said other centers have used modular construction to squeeze into tight timelines: “Once you get the green light, you can get something built and running very quickly.” (Despite a ferocious opposition campaign and failed lawsuit, the Embarcadero Navigation Center could be finished this month, roughly five months after construction began.)
Navigation Centers, in addition to having more support and services than a typical shelter, allow people to bring pets and partners, stay longer, and store their property. The city has opened eight over the five years, and currently operates six.
Some Haight-Ashbury residents complained Wednesday night that a center would attract even more homeless youth and increase drug use and dealing which, along with violent crime, once were commonplace at the McDonald’s and drew many calls to the police. That notion (often called the “magnet theory”) was disputed by longtime Haight-Ashbury activist Calvin Welch: “It’s terrible to pretend that we’re the only neighborhood in this town that has a drug problem, or that people who are housed don’t use drugs, that it’s a function of the street.”
What was clear in the meeting was that the fight over housing and development — how much gets built and which part of the population gets access — will only intensify as the planning process, even for interim use, truly begins. The interim use of the site is important; the city should never waste an opportunity to make people’s lives better. But ideally, there wouldn’t be a need for interim use, because the biggest need is dozens of new affordable places for San Franciscans to live, as soon as possible.
Kristi Coale (@unazurda) is a San Francisco-based freelance writer and radio producer for various outlets, including KALW’s Crosscurrents and the National Radio Project’s Making Contact.