Significant chunk of unbuilt land in Noe Valley seeks permit

While I was out on Broker's Tour today, I noticed that the huge, vacant lot at the corner of Valley and Castro Streets in Southern Noe Valley had permits recently posted (July 13th). This corner has obviously been vacant forever, and to my knowledge, it's the largest privately-owned unbuilt (and buildable) chunk of land in Noe Valley and possibly in all of San Francisco.


There is a brand-new appeals notice posted for two new single family homes at 501 and 507 Valley Street, but I think this space is larger than just two lots. As you can see in the photo, there is a project underway on Castro Street where they are adding another structure to the front of that lot, and likely remodeling the rear structure(s). The rest of this open area has been fenced off (read: not used by neighbors or anyone else) but looks like it will now be developed into at least two single family homes.


It also appears to me like there might be two additional lots in this amount of space (one more on Castro and one more on Valley), but I'll have to look that up to find out (see update below).


Two other houses at 554 and 558 Valley Street are just being completed and are being listed for $2,995,000 each. They are very nice, new construction homes, and given that another $3M home in Noe just went into contract after only a few days, there are likely going to be buyers to snatch these two homes up eventually (if not quickly).


But the reason for my post on this is that neighbors have until July 28th to appeal the permits for 501 and 507 Valley Street. If you're a neighbor and you want to know what's going to be built there, you should call the Planning Department or the Board of Appeals before the 28th. If you don't, you're not allowed to get your NIMBY shorts all bunched up after the houses get built. That's the rule. So you can't say I didn't (or the city didn't) give you fair warning...

UPDATE: In looking at the parcel map for the block, it looks like there are three vacant lots facing Castro, and no lots facing Valley (until you get to 519 Valley), so the owners/developers must have done some sort of lot reconfiguration. The addresses of the lots on Castro are 2200, 2206, and 2212. 2218 is likely the address of the building that is currently under construction.

A standard SF residential lot is 25 feet wide. This vacant corner is 105 feet deep. If you turned the addresses to face Valley, you could hypothetically turn these three vacant lots into four vacant lots that were 25 feet wide by 75 feet deep, which is totally feasible in most neighborhoods.

Also of note is that the owner/developer originally applied for this permit in June of 2005, so it's already been 13 months of bureaucracy to get to this point, and they're still far from moving their first shovel-full of dirt.