A local preservationist group in North Beach on Wednesday is hoping to make its case to city officials to designate the neighborhood as a historic district — a move San Francisco housing advocates say would make it all but impossible to build new housing there.
The San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission will hear comments from the public about the proposal. It has until the end of the month to present its recommendation to the state’s Historical Resources Commission, which is expected to vote on it and other nominations in early February.
The Northeast San Francisco Conservancy, a neighborhood group, applied for the designation in June and is hoping the move will help preserve roughly a dozen blocks of North Beach, mostly along Columbus Avenue, Powell Street, Stockton Street and Broadway. The area includes several iconic sites, such as Washington Square Park, City Lights Bookstore, the Old Spaghetti Factory Cafe and Saint Francis of Assisi Church.
“North Beach has an amazingly rich history,” said Nancy Shanahan, a historian with the Northeast San Francisco Conservancy and wife of former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, whose district included North Beach.
However, housing advocates warn that if the group is successful, more than 600 buildings within that area would be exempt from certain state housing laws. It’s a tactic that’s become increasingly common in recent years as state officials have levied stricter laws on cities and counties, requiring them to plan for a record number of new homes. The move in North Beach follows Baywood in San Mateo, Montebello near Los Angeles and North Florence Heights in San Diego, all of which have sought the same designation.
“When you’re talking about turning an entire neighborhood into a historic district with the goal of making it harder — impossible — to build any housing there, that’s very concerning,” said State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco).
Along with enjoying special property tax benefits and opportunities for more funding, historic districts have stricter rules for how developers can retrofit or redevelop buildings to preserve the architecture and historic character of the district. To keep up with those stringent standards, developers often have to spend more on projects, meaning the resulting building is either expensive or never gets built.
San Francisco is home to a handful of historic districts recognized by the state and national register, including parts of Russian Hill, Golden Gate Park, Jackson Square and the Presidio, but the city itself plays a minor role in designating these districts as “historic.” Instead, it’s up to the State Historical Resources Commission.
This centralized process dates back to the early 1900s, but housing advocates, including Wiener, argue these designations are increasingly being “weaponized” to slow new housing or prevent it altogether. Anyone who wants to designate a particular area as a “historic district” — and can afford to pay architectural experts and historians to draft an application — can simply submit their nomination to the state.
“The problem here is that you have people who do not want to see any new housing built in North Beach not going to City Hall to have the conversation, but going to a state body and asking them to short-circuit local conversations,” Wiener said.
Shanahan refutes that interpretation: “This is not a maneuver to block new housing from being built in North Beach,” she said.
However, Woody LaBounty of San Francisco Heritage, a local historic preservation advocacy group and proponent of the plan, said the state’s increasing zeal in ensuring new housing gets built across California does play a role in his support for the proposal.
“It’s especially important now because so many of these state housing production bills try to basically get outside of local control,” he said. “This is a great way to take another look at this before you just tear down this building to build a larger building because there’s something special here that probably should be preserved.”
Last year, the Legislature passed a law requiring cities to report historic districts to the state’s housing department to monitor how those designations impact the city’s ability to address housing needs.