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North Beach as a Historic District? Not Yet, SF Mayor Lurie Says

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Saints Peter and Paul Church and apartment buildings in North Beach, on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025.  (David M. Barreda/KQED)

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is asking a state commission to delay a hearing on whether to designate North Beach as a historic district after pushback from housing advocates.

The State Historical Resources Commission was scheduled to hear the petition from the Northeast San Francisco Conservancy on Feb. 7. On Monday, however, Lurie sent a letter to the commission urging it to delay, and the item no longer appears on its agenda. Lurie, along with commission members, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“My office recently learned of this proposal,” Lurie’s letter to the commission reads. “I am respectfully requesting that the commission delay their action on this nomination to allow my office to undertake this due diligence and seek additional feedback from impacted property owners, merchants and tenants in this neighborhood.”

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The petition requests a historic district designation for roughly a dozen blocks of North Beach, including beloved sites such as Washington Square Park, Saint Francis of Assisi Church and City Lights Bookstore.

However, housing advocates are concerned that such a designation would exempt the neighborhood from certain state laws and make it nearly impossible to build new housing on the more than 600 sites included in the proposed district.

An apartment window looks out above Columbus Cafe on Green Street in North Beach, Monday, Jan. 13, 2025. A San Francisco neighborhood group wants to designate North Beach as a historic district, but pro-housing groups are raising their red flags, saying that this move is merely a maneuver to block more housing from being built in this neighborhood. (David M. Barreda/KQED)

“I am extremely appreciative that the mayor got involved,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener (D–San Francisco), a vocal opponent of the proposal. “This proposed historic district, which encompasses essentially all of North Beach, is abusive and is designed to stop new housing. So, the mayor gets it.”

Other neighborhood groups across California, including those in San Mateo, Los Angeles and San Diego, have used similar tactics to exempt themselves from local and state laws requiring them to plan for their share of the 2.5 million new homes the state wants cities to make room for by 2030.

The power to designate a place as “historic” lies solely in the hands of the State Historical Resources Commission and does not require input from city leaders. Anyone who can afford to pay architectural experts and historians to write up a report can submit a nomination to the state office, which hears proposals once a quarter.

“It’s obvious that this dense and compact neighborhood epitomizes the heart and soul and spirit that is North Beach,” said Katherine Petrin, the architectural historian and planner who prepared the nomination for North Beach. “The bottom line is that this nomination deserves to be heard and approved now.”

Former county Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who for a decade represented the district that includes North Beach, was outspoken during his tenure about preserving the historical character of certain San Francisco neighborhoods and was behind an effort last year to restrict housing density on the city’s northeast waterfront. He was not directly involved in the North Beach petition, but his wife, Nancy Shanahan, is the president of the Northeast San Francisco Conservancy, which requested the nomination.

Peskin, however, termed out of office. And Danny Sauter, a community organizer from North Beach with endorsements from pro-housing heavy hitters including Wiener, San Francisco YIMBY Action and the Housing Action Coalition, won his seat in November. Sauter did not return a request for comment.

It wasn’t immediately clear where Lurie’s request leaves the petition, but proponents have vowed to keep it alive. The next commission hearing is May 8.

“I just want it to get back on the agenda,” said Woody LaBounty, president of the preservationist organization SF Heritage and a supporter of the historic district nomination. “We don’t want the classic thing of ‘something needs to be studied more,’ but it just gets killed instead. It’s been decades of work to get here.”

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