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Posted Feb 4, 2021, 8:21 AM
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heavy user of walkability
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: Mission Bay, San Francisco
Posts: 3,150
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Shipyard
Shipyard update
Quote:
After years of delay, concern about toxic cleanup, S.F.'s big Shipyard development gets moving again
J.K. Dineen
Feb. 2, 2021
From the window in his Shipyard condominium, Dean Talanehzar likes to sit and watch the backhoes and bulldozers pushing dirt around for the next phase of San Francisco’s biggest development project.
While the coming building won’t be particularly big — 77 units out of 12,000 planned on a former Navy base and nearby Candlestick Point — he is heartened because the developer is bullish enough to keep working despite the pandemic and the unresolved toxic cleanup issues in the surrounding parcels.
“It’s encouraging to see construction progressing,” said Talanehzer, who is the head of talent for a South of Market software company.
Three years after a cleanup scandal that was reported extensively in The Chronicle brought the project to a standstill, the redevelopment of the first phase of the 750-acre former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard has quietly been revived. So far 505 housing units have been completed, with 102 of them below market rate. In addition to the 77 condos just starting construction, design and permitting is under way on 409 other units, which include three buildings of 100% affordable units and a 224-unit mostly market-rate complex. The total first phase — there are five phases altogether — will have 1,428 housing units, 29% them affordable, as well 26 acres of parks.
“We have been working on this community for 15 years — we want to make sure we have enough inventory,” said Garrett Chan, who heads up sales for Lennar Corp., which is building the condos.
Sally Oerth, acting director of the city’s Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, the agency that oversees the project, said it is committed to staying on track ...
While the hilltop area being developed was used for Navy officer housing and has been ruled free of hazardous pollutants, the acreage down the hill ranks as some of the most contaminated property in the United States, tainted by radioactivity and high levels of toxic heavy metals like manganese, arsenic and vanadium.
In 2017 a group of whistle-blowers who had worked on the cleanup went public with allegations of frequent cheating on the project. ...
After that, lawsuits came in bunches. ... While the Tetra Tech case is still pending, in August Lennar and its affiliates agreed to pay $6.3 million to the homeowners, who alleged that the developer misled them about the status of the cleanup, thus diminishing their home values.
The allegations of fraud prompted the Navy to retest portions of the site, setting the overall redevelopment back by five years or more and delaying the creation of thousands of housing units. While the bulk of the former shipyard was supposed to be cleaned up and delivered for development by 2019, the Navy now says the next parcel transfer won’t happen until late 2023 and several others won’t take place until 2026 and 2028.
Chan said the last condo buildings were completed in late 2019 and are now 80% sold...
And the Bayview neighborhood remains the city’s most affordable, with an average price per square foot of $666, compared to the overall citywide average of $986 a square foot.
While the new construction at the Shipyard is more costly than some of the district’s older housing stock, it’s still more affordable than comparable complexes. A new, one-bedroom condo that might sell for $1.4 million 2 miles north in trendy Dogpatch would sell for $700,000 in the Shipyard. A three-bedroom townhouse would sell for a bit over $1 million, about half what it might fetch in an older neighborhood.
Talanehzar, who previously lived in Mission Bay, originally bought a 1,400-square-foot condominium for $920,000 in 2016. When a second child came along recently, he and his wife upgraded to an 1,800-square-foot place for $1.1 million. He said the 4-mile trip to his SoMa office is an easy commute, and the Shipyard’s open space — there are overlooks, dog runs, playgrounds and 15 pocket parks — offers ample space for his kids to play.
Troy Wilson, a real estate agent who lives at the Shipyard ... In the past year ... sold a one-bedroom condo to a couple for $529,000, a two-bedroom for $950,000 and a three-bedroom for just under $1 million. ...
For now the Shipyard has one glaring downside: the lack of retail. The neighborhood’s one store, the Storehouse, closed in May. In a year, construction is supposed to start on a complex that will have 20,000 square feet of retail in addition to 224 apartments. The developer is Tabernacle Development Associates, a group of five pastors from predominantly African American San Francisco churches, said the Rev. Dr. James McCray, who is heading up the project.
McCray said the group started working on the project in 1998, ... he hopes entrepreneurs from the adjacent Bayview will fill most of the retail space — many of those Black business owners have been priced out as that neighborhood has gentrified...
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I too am surprised it's only my 2nd posting -- maybe I've posted before but in the Los Angeles forum. Anyway, I'll try to be a lil more active with the Van Ness project pics in the future 
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