After years of running in place, San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood is now experiencing a construction boom. A recently announced 36-unit apartment building for the corner of Turk and Jones is one of seven ongoing projects in a four-block area. Thanks to restrictive zoning controls imposed through community pressure in 1985, none of these projects exceed eight stories and most are only forty-feet tall. These projects will create the physical changes necessary to reduce drug dealing in the community and to enhance safety. Six of the seven projects, which include a community center, will be completed no later than 2010.

No San Francisco neighborhood has witnessed fewer physical changes over the past three decades than the Tenderloin. Now some longstanding vacant sites are finally under construction, and will help rejuvenate the community.

The most recently announced project is a 37-unit apartment building to be built on a parking lot at Turk and Jones. The project should go before the Planning Commission in early 2008, with construction starting by the end of that year. Designed by architect Gabriel Ng for owner Eddie Tsang, the project eliminates a site of drug dealing and adds 23 one and 14 two-bedroom apartments to a neighborhood that primarily has SRO’s and studios.

The 180 Jones Street project is less than a block away from the mammoth Salvation Army project at 240 Jones. This will include a Joan Kroc Community Center, and over 140 affordable apartments.

180 Jones is across the street from a ten-unit condo/rental project at the site of an historic gay bathhouse. Construction on this renovation project should commence soon.

A block and a half from 180 Jones in the other direction is the new St. Anthony’s building, which will include a new dining room with an enclosed line. That project should be completed no later than 2009.

Two blocks west of 180 Jones, at Hyde, a 31-unit apartment building should be completed by the end of the year. This project is also being built on a long-vacant site that was a center for drug dealing.

A block from Turk and Hyde, at Eddy and Hyde, there is a 65-unit, four-story project that will come before the Planning Commission on August 2. While the current owner, the AE Evans Corp., intends to sell the property, it will have all of the necessary entitlements for construction to proceed.

At the former KGO building at Golden Gate and Hyde, construction is underway on 90 condos. This is currently the only project in the neighborhood likely to produce for-sale units in the next two years. While all for-profit multi-unit buildings in San Francisco are condo-mapped, the Tenderloin has not been seen as likely to attract buyers, while rents have been rising.

The “Symphony Towers” condos just outside the Tenderloin at Turk and Van Ness have opened with studios selling for $300,000. Builders of the KGO condos are hoping to sell some of their units in this range, though the market could change in the next two years.

Since 1989, the south side of Golden Gate Ave from Polk to the UNITEHERE Local 2 building at Leavenworth has been closed after 5:00pm. This has created a terrible safety problem at the entrance to the community, and explains why many people refuse to enter the neighborhood after dark

The creation of active nighttime uses at the KGO building will change this.

These projects have reduced the number of “problem properties” in the Tenderloin. We still have the notorious Post Office at Golden Gate and Hyde, a structure seemingly designed to facilitate drug trafficking.

Community representatives recently met with Nancy Pelosi’s office about the Post Office blight, and Mayor Newsom has expressed his own anger over the situation. A community campaign is beginning to stop the federal government’s facilitation of drug dealing in the Tenderloin.

Parking lots in low-income communities can become drug havens, and the construction boom has eliminated some key offenders. Still remaining is the SEIU Local 87-owned parking lot at Turk and Hyde, most commonly known for the people selling clothes in front. The misuse of this critical site----formerly the historic Blackhawk Jazz Club until it was torn down in 1964---is a neighborhood tragedy, and renewed overtures to the union are being made.

When you add the TNDC/CHP family housing project at 650 Eddy, the Glide/TNDC projects at Mason and Ellis and the TNDC mega-project at Eddy and Taylor to the above mix, it is easy to understand the growing optimism about the Tenderloin’s future.

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