Forge Development Revises Plan for Tenderloin Housing Tower

Forge Development Partners has revised plans to bulldoze a 93-year-old church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin and build a new one beneath a 261-unit apartment tower.

The San Francisco-based developer has ditched a controversial group-housing proposal and refiled plans to build the 17-story tower at 450 O’Farrell Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported. It would replace the historic church and a commercial storefront..

The group-housing plan to build a 13-story building with 316 microunits with 632 beds sparked a lawsuit after it was rejected by the Board of Supervisors. It also spurred new legislation on group housing.

The latest plan for 450 O’Farrell Street calls for a tower with 261 apartments, an 8,900-square-foot replacement church to house the property owner, the Fifth Church of Christ Scientist, and 1,700 square feet of ground floor commercial space.

The highrise would include 98 studios, 114 one-bedroom, 30 two-bedroom and 19 three-bedroom apartments. It would include a courtyard, terraces on the fourth and 10th floors, and a roof deck. Private balconies would be provided for 74 units.

The back-to-the-drawing board proposal came after supervisors complained the group housing units were too small and didn’t fit a neighborhood in need of family housing.

The project was revised three times and faced numerous delays before the micro-unit plan was approved by the city’s Planning Commission in the summer of 2021. The green light was given if Forge would include more units larger than 500 square feet.

The Tenderloin Housing Clinic appealed, saying the area already has many residential hotel units, couldn’t absorb a “micro-unit” complex and would benefit instead from larger units for families who need affordable housing. The units were to be rented for more than $3,000 a month.

In October 2021, the board unanimously voted against the project, saying the units would become “tech dorms” for transient workers.

District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney, who represents the Tenderloin, said at the time that he unsuccessfully worked to increase the size of the units while maintaining the group housing status.

“The vague definition of group housing made that very challenging,” Haney told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We have come to the conclusion that the conditional use authorization does not meet the needs of the neighborhood.”

The rejection sparked a lawsuit by the church and Forge the following year that accused the supervisors of violating federal laws, including civil rights granted to the church by the First Amendment and the Fair Housing Act and California’s Housing Accountability Act.

The parties this year agreed to settle the lawsuit. And while the terms of the agreement are not public, court records show that it was formalized during a hearing in March, according to the Business Times.

With the lawsuit laid to rest, Forge has scrapped the group housing units and has gone back to traditional apartments, which it plans to build using the state density bonus law.

— Dana Bartholomew