It looks like a lake in the middle of San Francisco, replete with its own raft. But not to City Attorney David Chui, who accused Leap Development of abandoning a development site.
Chui has sued an affiliate of the locally based developer led by Xiangxi “Terry” Song for public nuisance over the water-filled hole marred by “graffiti, garbage, mosquito infestations and standing water” at 360 5th Street, in SoMa, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The Leap affiliate, San Mateo-based 360 Fifth, owes more than $1 million in fines related to the property, according to the complaint.
In 2019, the developer excavated the two-thirds acre site to build 127 condominiums, when such housing was hot. A year later and six months into the pandemic, the builder halted construction. The eight-story, $111 million project was never built.
The contractor, Thompson Builder, then filed a lawsuit claiming that Leap Development owed $5.8 million for its work. The developer denied the claim.
Since then, the property has become a neighborhood eyesore, according to the city.
Leap has “maintained the property in a substandard condition, subjecting neighbors to a blighted parcel of land filled with large ponds of standing water, mosquitos, overgrown vegetation and piles of trash, as well as abandoned construction equipment that blocks the sidewalk,” the lawsuit states.
Chiu said numerous city departments have tried to get the developer to address the health and safety issues at the site “but (the owners) have been unresponsive.”
Neither Song nor Leap Development representative Michael Pallmann responded to calls or emails from the Chronicle.
The Fifth Street swimming hole between Folsom and Harrison streets is among a dozen or more major development sites on hold in San Francisco.
On Fifth Street alone, there are four other big parcels once primed for redevelopment, only to lay fallow for years: a shuttered donut shop, a fenced-in gas station, a former tennis club and a one-time maintenance yard, according to the newspaper.
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Leap bought the approved development site in 2018 from Dallas-based Trammell Crow Residential for $21.7 million, according to the San Francisco Business Times.
In May, Leap defaulted on a $10 million loan linked to the abandoned lot at 360 5th Street. The previous summer, Leap listed the shovel-ready project site for an undisclosed price, according to a marketing brochure.
— Dana Bartholomew