Group I Selling 2 Acres Approved for 62 Townhomes in SF

A couple of years ago, Group I rejected a $15 million offer from a preservation group for a historic greenhouse property in San Francisco’s Portola District. Now it has put the lot approved for dozens of homes up for sale.

The locally based developer led by Joy Ou listed the 2.2-acre former cut-flower farm as a “shovel ready” site for 62 townhomes at 770 Woolsey Street, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The price for the decaying greenhouse property was undisclosed. Colliers International holds the listing.

It was in October 2022 that Group I balked at the offer from The Greenhouse Group, which had raised $15 million in private and public money to buy the site. The bid was rejected.

Since then, the developer has tried to find financing to build the 62 homes, to no avail. A failure to obtain financing also led Group I to recently sell a historic office building in Mid-Market it had planned to convert into 45 apartments.

Real estate brokers who follow the market told the Chronicle that Group I was unlikely to fetch more than the $15 million offered by the community group for the approved site in Portola.

Several unidentified brokers put the value of the land at about $200,000 a unit, which pencils out to $12.4 million, or about 18 percent less than the urban agriculture group offered in late 2022, according to the newspaper.

Group I and Colliers didn’t respond to the Chronicle’s requests for comment. The Greenhouse Project co-founder Juan Carlos Cancino said neither informed him of the listing.

The sale of the land comes with a catch: a requirement that one-third of an acre be set aside for “community space” and that two of the greenhouses be restored.

The former cut-flower farm was once part of 19 blocks of greenhouses tended by Italian and Maltese immigrants. The century-old farm, known as “Rose Factory,” closed in 1990.

Almost no approved development sites have sold since the pandemic, according to the Chronicle.

The unidentified brokers said the property may be marketable because the approved townhomes and low-density flats are between 20 percent and 30 percent cheaper to build than six- or eight-story apartment buildings common in San Francisco.

The average size of the approved townhomes is more than 1,700 square feet. Colliers estimates an “achievable sellout” of about $1,200 per square foot, or $2.05 million per home.

— Dana Bartholomew