From this week’s SF Weekly…

In San Francisco’s poorer neighborhoods, when most folks hear the word “developer,” their ears perk up, and impromptu armies of residents form to fight against gentrification and to protect their community integrity. These same citizens often clash with corporations, pushing them to shut down and clean up pollution-spewing factories, and then fight amongst themselves over plans for the areas once the plants close.

Not so with the former Schlage Lock site, which is among the largest parcels of unused land in San Francisco.

Visitacion Valley’s residents agree on a plan to develop this 20-acre plot, despite extreme toxic contamination in its soil and groundwater. The cleaned-up area would be a transit village, sandwiched between the new Muni light-rail station and the fast-developing Leland Avenue corridor. Outlined in a snappy, 45-page ringed booklet complete with colorful maps, the proposed development includes housing, retail space, and a much-needed supermarket.

The community approves. The San Francisco Planning Department approves. Pulte Homes, a Michigan-based developer, approves. It’s like they’re all one big, happy redevelopment family — except the Ingersoll-Rand Co., which owns two-thirds of the site, won’t sell.

The Schlage operations shut down for good in 1999. With so many people in favor of this site being developed, why hasn’t the city stepped in?

Maybe it’s because of Ingersoll’s fear of future legal action. “The prospect of legal action is the main reason Ingersoll has held onto the land, despite several multimillion-dollar offers to buy it. Ingersoll has maintained that no matter how much money goes into soil remediation and other cleanup, it’s possible that some residents who would live on the site would suffer from cancer decades from now, and it would be impossible to determine for certain whether toxins, or just the normal course of life, caused the disease.”

Supervisor Sophie Maxwell brought this before the Board last year, but it’s going to be a long process. “City officials won’t say whether the eventual goal is to spur Ingersoll into action, or to force the company off the land. The costs of the current investigation alone are high, but they pale in comparison to the massive tax revenues that could flow from a viable, developed area. Nevertheless, the city taking over the site and anointing an outside developer would do little to clear up the sticky wicket of costly toxic cleanup and future health-related litigation. Maxwell and her colleagues hope that someday soon Ingersoll will back off its hard line on indemnification and let the development process move forward.”

“I haven’t given up on them,” says Maxwell. “I don’t think we will until the last minute.”

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