S.F.'s next big housing development could rise in this unexpected neighborhood

San Francisco Chronicle​

12-05-2025

A lush, 6-acre property next to the Presidio Golf Club long served as a quiet sanctuary for impoverished seniors at the border of San Francisco's Presidio Terrace neighborhood, an upscale private enclave marked by tree-lined streets and multimillion-dollar homes.
But with the closure of the St. Anne's Home last month, the 59 residents who were cared for at the Little Sisters of the Poor's nursing facility at 300 Lake St. have been moved out. The Catholic order is now selling its land for the first time in more than a century.
A sales brochure obtained by the Chronicle lists the initial offering price as $58.5 million.
With a mid-May deadline to submit bids fast approaching, buyers are circling, according to individuals with insight into the sale of 300 Lake. 'All the major housing developers in San Francisco have looked at it,' said one market participant who is familiar with the bidding process.
That includes the city, which has toured the property that features a main building spanning just over 120,000 square feet as well as a 4,500-square-foot carriage house. Sources said the city looked at the site with the intent of potentially acquiring it for homeless housing, but will not be purchasing the property.
Homelessness and the city's housing crunch are two pressing issues that San Francisco leaders have long struggled to wrap their arms around. And in light of an ongoing rezoning effort that has targeted the city's west side, where single-family homes dominate and new development has often met resistance, 300 Lake's sale is likely to test the city's priorities, as well as its residents' appetite for more density in areas like the Inner Richmond neighborhood, where the former nursing home is located.
The sweeping rezoning plan, a draft of which was released by Mayor Daniel Lurie last month, will allow taller buildings along transit routes from the Marina to the Sunset and Richmond districts. It's an effort to accommodate 36,000 new housing units while reshaping parts of the city that have seen little construction in the past 50 years.
Some neighborhood groups have expressed concern about the planned upzoning.
In a notice informing its membership about a town hall meeting that was held in March on the rezoning plan, the Planning Association for Richmond, or PAR, described the changes coming to Richmond as the 'Manhattanization' of the neighborhood.
'These plans will result in more traffic congestion, less greenspace, loss of small businesses and an overall decrease in the character of our community,' the organization said about the larger rezoning plan in the February notice. The Chronicle attempted to reach the organization on Friday but was unsuccessful.
While much of the neighborhood immediately surrounding the former nursing home site has been spared from the rezoning — the current 40-foot height limits there will remain intact — the 300 Lake property could see its allowable development height more than double, to 85 feet.
One local developer said his firm has had 'discussions with groups' involved in its sale around 'trying to repurpose the existing building' on the site.
'You could do something more community-serving on Lake Street, and then you do single family or town homes on the back of the site,' the developer said. 'You could scrape the whole site and build 350 units. I've heard that you could do something maybe a little more dense on Lake Street, like 150 units, and then do 30 to 35 single-family homes on the back of the site. I think you have a couple different options. I'm curious about how the neighbors will react.'
Given the new rezoning directive, the city's Planning Commission is unlikely to become the 'limiter' for projects proposing density at the property, according to one insider who told the Chronicle that the 'direction is clear — the city wants to see multifamily housing' at 300 Lake and other parcels it has identified for upzoning. In fact, the source described concerns on the part of the city that 'somebody might buy it (300 Lake) and build too few homes.'
San Francisco Planning Commission Director Rich Hillis confirmed that sentiment, given that the city faces a state mandate to plan for 82,000 entitled units by 2031.
'The site presents a unique opportunity with the capacity for a significant amount of housing,' he said. 'The city's housing element and our proposed rezoning would prefer a mid-rise multifamily project there.'
David Heller, President of the Geary Boulevard Merchants Association, called 300 Lake a 'mega area,' and said that adding housing to the site in the future could ultimately come as a boost to merchants in the larger neighborhood. But, he is concerned that construction resulting from the larger rezoning plan could hurt businesses in Richmond's commercial corridors, as many are struggling to recover from the pandemic.
'More people in the future is good,' Heller said, but 'how do you do it without really impacting the community?'
Betty Louie, board adviser for the Chinatown Merchants Association, lives in the Richmond neighborhood and said that community support for new housing at 300 Lake will 'really depend on what the developer is planning to do.'
'We don't know anything yet, so it's too soon to tell — but if developers are looking, that means that the rezoning is already in place,' she said.
There are potentially larger factors than neighborhood politics that could shape how the 300 Lake property will be repurposed in the future, like the seller's requirements.
'Regarding the future, the Little Sisters are looking for the right buyer at the right price. That is, a buyer who will use the property in a way that is in harmony with their mission and the mission of the Church — not necessarily a long-term care facility or health care focused,' said Greg Zielinski, of Missouri-based Zielinski Companies, who has been hired by the Little Sisters to oversee the property's sale.
As part of Lurie's plan to end homelessness, the city is working to add 1,500 interim shelter beds and has faced pressure to spread social services, which are primarily located in downtown and in eastern neighborhoods, across its various neighborhoods.
Zielinski confirmed that city representatives visited 300 Lake in April, but told the Chronicle on Friday that they have since 'communicated that they will not be making an offer on the site.'
Lurie's office declined to comment on why the city is no longer pursuing the 300 Lake property.
But a source familiar with the city's real estate plans said that the cost of the site was an issue as it faces a ballooning $1 billion budget deficit. With downtown real estate selling at major discounts in the wake of the pandemic, spending tens of millions of dollars for the former nursing home could be difficult to justify, the source said.
Whether or not the pricing makes sense for the private market ultimately depends on 'what you think you could entitle there, to make it feasible or not,' said the local developer, who also toured the site.
In 2022, the former California Pacific Medical Center campus, which is a half-mile from the 300 Lake property, sold to developer Prado Group for $51.5 million. That campus spans about 5 acres and had already been through a lengthy entitlement process by another developer, who won approval for its redevelopment into 273 new homes, by the time Prado scooped it up.
Prado has since moved to increase the amount of housing planned at the site in an effort to increase the redevelopment project's feasibility.