By J.K. Dineen : sfchronicle – excerpt
For nearly two years, San Francisco officials have been pitching a plan to add thousands of new housing units by allowing taller apartment buildings on transit corridors: wide boulevards such as Geary, Irving and Judah, where streetcars and major bus lines ply busy shopping strips.
So when Lakeside residents saw the proposed rezoning map, they were baffled to discover that nearly half of their neighborhood — an enclave of narrow one-way streets and single-family homes with lemon trees and white picket fences across 19th Avenue from Stonestown Galleria — was targeted for eight-story buildings.
Resident Barb Debaun, who attended a recent community meeting on the proposal, said she was shocked when she looked at the plan’s fine print.
“We were blindsided,” she said. “It was presented as if it were a done deal. What they are planning would have a destructive impact on the quality of life in this neighborhood.”.
For the past two years, the Planning Department vision for upzoning transit corridors on the west side, and other neighborhoods, has been hashed out in commission meetings and at neighborhood presentations. But while revamping a city’s zoning mostly involves drawing lines on a map, the reality of those changes — how they might impact the look and feel of a neighborhood like Lakeside — is just starting to sink in…
“They just took a red pen and everything that touched 19th Avenue went from 28 to 85 feet,” said Katherine Petrin, an architectural historian and preservation planner who lives in Lakeside.
Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who represents Lakeside, said she was surprised that so many parcels in Lakeside were upzoned…(more)
Good reason to be careful who you elect to represent you in Sacramento. And become a lot more aware of who is fighting these battles and working on a ballot initiative to put zoning controls back in the hands of local government. That would be ourneighborhoodvoices.com