By Laura Waxmann, San Francisco Chronicle The Tribune Content Agency
A San Francisco supervisor is urging Mayor London Breed to use eminent domain to seize the Safeway property in the city's Western Addition and turn it into affordable housing. The request precedes a community meeting scheduled for Thursday on the proposed closure and redevelopment of the Safeway store into market-rate housing.
On Tuesday, Supervisor Dean Preston, whose district includes the Safeway, submitted a letter requesting that Breed explore all options to acquire the property at 1335 Webster St. for affordable housing - including using eminent domain, which allows the city to take private land for public use. Preston's office said that the request was reviewed by the city attorney, and added that any future development on the site should include a grocery store.
The request calls for Breed to respond by Dec. 3 on where she stands on the city intervening in the pending deal between Safeway and the private developer vying to buy the site, and whether she is willing to direct city departments to evaluate the viability of acquiring the site before the end of her term in January.
"We will work with you to introduce any necessary legislation at the Board," Preston said in the letter.
Breed's office said Wednesday that it had not seen the letter and did not share its views on initiating the eminent domain process or otherwise trying to acquire the 3.6-acre site for affordable housing.
"Supervisor Preston has yet to engage our office or the department to raise this issue or provide additional information," a spokesperson for Breed said, referring to the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development.
Safeway did not respond to the Chronicle's inquiries.
Safeway announced at the start of last year that by March it would shutter the store, which has been in the Fillmore for more than 40 years, and then would sell the land to Align Real Estate for redevelopment into housing. The Board of Supervisors approved a resolution by Preston calling for the store to remain open, and Breed, who grew up in the area, ultimately negotiated to keep the Safeway store operating through early 2025.
Last month, San Francisco passed a law that would require grocery stores to give six months notice before store closures, which Preston introduced in response to Safeway's plans. The law would not apply to this Safeway location since its closure is already public, but Preston's office pointed out that Safeway could comply with a provision that now requires it to attend community meetings.
Thursday's community meeting was to be led by residents who are anxious about Safeway's departure. Preston, who was scheduled to attend the meeting, said in a statement on Wednesday that "neither Safeway nor the developer have provided any public details to the community regarding development plans or the status of the proposed sale."
Public records show that Align Real Estate has yet to close on its bid to purchase 1335 Webster, and there is no application on file for the proposed housing project, though the Chronicle previously reported that around 1,000 homes are planned. The developer declined to comment on the status of its deal with Safeway or plans for the site when contacted Wednesday.
"Such a development would be unaffordable to nearly all residents of the neighborhood, and could compound years of gentrification and displacement," Preston wrote in the letter to Breed, calling for any housing on the site to be built as affordable rather than market-rate.
Building affordable housing would be a valid public use that would justify the city exercising its eminent domain rights on 1335 Webster, according to Rick Friess, a land use attorney who specializes in eminent domain cases. He said eminent domain has been used in recent years by other jurisdictions in California to acquire land for schools.
"If San Francisco had an affordable housing project in mind that they were going to develop, or co-develop with a private developer, that would likely pass muster," Friess said.
But, the eminent domain route is procedurally intensive and could be politically fraught - particularly with leadership at City Hall set to change in two months. It would also come at a cost to the city and potentially open it up to lawsuits, according to Friess.
Friess said that condemning the site would require a supermajority vote from the Board of Supervisors. Both Breed and Preston lost their reelection bids earlier this month, and will be succeeded in their roles as mayor and District 5 supervisor by nonprofit CEO and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie and former Obama administration staffer Bilal Mahmood, respectively. Three other supervisors are termed out and will be replaced by new board members.
So far, Breed has led talks with Safeway. Max Szabo, campaign spokesperson for Lurie, said Lurie could not yet weigh in on the eminent domain issue.
"The mayor-elect will be handling the historic challenges and decisions it needs to make upon assumption of office and is currently focused on building an administration rooted in accountability, service and change," Szabo said.
Mahmood declined to comment.
Friess said that condemnation is very much a "political process" that requires a "strong proponent."
"If you don't have an advocate on this stuff, it tends to fade away," he said.
The process would require the city to buy the site from Safeway at fair market value. Records show that the grocery chain bought 1335 Webster from San Francisco's former Redevelopment Agency in the 1980s for upwards of $1.5 million.
The current value of the site would be the subject of a government appraisal in the eminent domain process, and such appraisals are often contested, Friess said.
"If the Safeway property is very valuable to a private developer for high-rise residential, that's super valuable land and that may (increase) the compensation that the city would have to pay," he said.
The process also involves review under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, which would give Safeway an avenue to challenge the city's condemnation of the site.
Decades ago, the city's former Redevelopment Agency invoked eminent domain to take control of land in the historically Black Fillmore and Western Addition neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal, displacing more than 10,000 Black families and others. As a former redevelopment site, the Safeway lot "holds great potential for affordable housing development," said Preston, citing state legislation that offers new financing tools for the development of affordable housing on former redevelopment sites.
Appetite for both market-rate and affordable housing development has been curbed by a worsening economy in the wake of the pandemic.
Last year, San Francisco voters passed a $300 million affordable housing bond meant to help build up to 1,500 homes while leveraging other resources.
Meanwhile, few large market-rate housing projects have moved forward in recent years as developers have faced compounding challenges in regard to financing, and several of the city's large development agreement projects that were under way have stalled.
Align last year placed a 65-story market-rate rental tower that it was trying to get approved in the South of Market neighborhood on hold.
Meanwhile, the Fillmore community is facing very real problems: A report issued by the city's Human Rights Committee this year found that as the pending closure of the neighborhood's only full-service grocery store has "significant implications for questions of food access and quality of life in the Fillmore and Japantown."
Residents are also concerned about the closure earlier this month of a Wells Fargo Bank branch on the property, and that prolonged vacancy pending its redevelopment will add to the neighborhood's already notable list of vacant and blighted storefronts.
There have also been safety concerns: The store has struggled with rampant theft and other issues - including frequent car break-ins, assaults, loitering and illegal dumping - over the past few years.
"This is a major grocery store in the neighborhood, and it's hard to just replace," said Erris Edgerly of the Fillmore United Alliance, which is organizing Thursday's community meeting. "If Safeway wants to pull out, let us at least find some type of way of keeping the grocery store open until there's a development agreement, and from there, let us have talks about what we want to see" built on the site.
The words "eminent domain" are emotional for the Fillmore, Edgerly said, given the community's painful history with redevelopment. "But if there is a way it can work in our favor so that we are controlling properties this time along with the city, then I think it could work out."
Reach Laura Waxmann: [email protected]