Plan to Make SF Neighborhood Historic Creates Friction

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has asked the State of California to slow its roll toward making North Beach a historic district, giving YIMBYs a partial win over local preservationists being cast as NIMBYs in the ongoing drama.

The designation would largely forbid teardown or major changes to existing properties for replacement or redevelopment unless plans pass muster under the notoriously thorny California Environmental Quality Act, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Lurie’s request for more time drew cheers from YIMBYs as a stopgap, but it did not come with any indication of where the newly elected mayor stands on the notion of a historic district covering the home of the city’s Little Italy and other already densely populated precincts of North Beach.

Preservationists, meanwhile, see North Beach as an invaluable piece of the city’s heritage in its current form. A 300-page nomination application by the Northeast San Francisco Conservancy seeks to establish a North Beach Historic District under the National Register of Historic Places.

The application deems about 600 of the 700 parcels in the area — which sits just inland from the Embarcadero, between Chinatown and Fisherman’s Wharf — to be historically significant. Among those are various structures built in the wake of the 1906 earthquake and fire that leveled the city.

The nomination for historic status has gone to the State of California’s Historical Resources Commission, which can make a recommendation to the National Park Service.

It remains unclear whether the commission will delay a hearing on the matter; if so it will likely take until at least May to reschedule.

Lurie said he plans to use any time afforded by a delay in the state commission’s hearing process to “to undertake this due diligence and seek additional feedback from impacted property owners, merchants and tenants in the neighborhood,” according to the Chronicle.

While Lurie plays for time, housing activists have a clear-cut ally in State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat who represents San Francisco and has long been an advocate for more housing development. Wiener told the Chronicle that the bid for a historical district amounts to an attempt to “freeze North Beach in amber” instead of making it a potential spot for residential development or redevelopment projects.

— Jerry Sullivan