SF Supervisors Greenlight Stonestown Galleria Revamp to Add 3,500 Homes

Stonestown Galleria’s asphalt parking lots will soon be replaced by thousands of homes and sprawling open space, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday.

A development project five years in the making was approved unanimously by the board, greenlighting plans to reimagine the town center on the west side of the city. The proposal from Brookfield Properties includes 3,500 affordable and market-rate housing units, public parks and open space, retail shops and child and senior service centers.

“This project is going to be really transformational for the West Side,” Supervisor Myrna Melgar, who represents the district, said. “It’ll bring in new energy, new residents, in a way where it just makes sense.”

The residential development will feature a mix of townhomes, towers and mid-rise buildings, according to developers. Twenty percent of the units built will be below market rate, including a proposed “Senior Village” of 200 senior residences.

Around the new homes, six acres of open space and parks are planned, and a new commercial block, 20th Avenue, will be built through the center of the development. The project also includes plans for a new senior center and a 7,500-square-foot child care center, which will serve up to 100 kids, according to development plans.

Melgar said that the completed project would essentially form a brand-new neighborhood, which she believes will help Stonestown Galleria continue to thrive despite other nearby malls struggling, like Westfield downtown, which announced it would shut down last year.

“When Macy’s left and then Nordstrom left, Stonestown was able to pivot into a different mix of services and experience in addition to retail, which has made it a place that people want to go to,” she said. Stonestown added a new movie theater, Whole Foods Market and Sports Basement in 2021.

“The addition of new housing is going to take it to the next generation because there’s going to be customers who are living right there. If we had done that at Westfield 15 years ago — plan ahead and diversify the offerings and add new housing — I think we might not be in the situation that we’re in there right now.”

The thousands of new housing units are also a “down payment” on the considerable number the city will need to build in the coming years, according to Melgar. Under Mayor London Breed’s Housing for All plan, the city will aim to create 82,000 homes in the next eight years, many of which will be in the neighborhoods around Stonestown.

A few other large developments — including a renovation and expansion of the Park Merced rental community south of San Francisco State University and a mixed-income community planned for a parking lot near City College — have been approved in the area, but none have broken ground yet, Melgar said.

The Stonestown development is expected to be built in phases and will take over two decades to complete.