San Francisco Plan May Provide U.S. Model : Store Gives Air Rights for Housing Project
When community activists here asked Standard Brands Paint for permission to build low-income housing on the roof of a planned home-decoration center, the answer was succinct and to the point.
“Build on my roof?” asked Stuart Buchalter, chairman and chief executive of the Torrance-based retailer. “Are you nuts?”
The executive’s response was so vehement that “I had to hold the phone away from my ear,” recalled Buck Bagot, executive director of the Northern California Assn. for Non-Profit Housing.
On Friday, however, Buchalter was in San Francisco for the grand opening of his new store--and to “break the air” for 49 units of housing and a small park that will be built above it. In the first such public-private partnership in the country, Standard Brands donated the air rights and spent $232,000 to fortify the store’s roof for the three-story addition.
“This is a real winner,” exulted San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, who as a state assemblyman brokered the deal that allowed the project to go forward. “It’s everything: housing for seniors and handicapped people, a great store, open space for kids and jobs for people in the neighborhood.”
The occasion was especially sweet for Agnos, who has weathered a torrent of bad news during his first five months in office--most notably a $180-million budget deficit bequeathed him by predecessor Dianne Feinstein. The call for affordable housing in this land-short city was a centerpiece of Agnos’ campaign for mayor.
Buchalter, a Republican, paid tribute to Agnos, a Democrat, at Friday’s rooftop ceremony. “He was able to explain to me in pretty simple language that if we wanted to do business in this neighborhood, there were certain things we had to accommodate. More importantly, he was able to explain to the neighborhood what we as a business could not live with.”
Agnos was equally effusive in his praise. “Here is a socially responsible corporation that listened to the needs of a city,” he said, adding: “This will serve as a model for the nation. The first time is always the hardest.”
The 15,000-square-foot store in the multiracial Bernal Heights neighborhood occupies a site formerly occupied by a bowling alley and, before that, a trolley-car barn.
Standard Brands paid $1.2 million for the property in 1984 “because the demographics of the neighborhood were terrific: a lot of people fixing up their houses,” said Buchalter. The company’s home-decoration centers sell paint, floor coverings and related merchandise.
“We didn’t know until later that there were people in the neighborhood who had other ideas for the site,” Buchalter added. “But after a lot of meetings and conversations, we got our store and they got what they wanted.”
Standard Brands also got a $600,000 tax deduction for donating the building’s air rights to the Bernal Heights Community Foundation, the nonprofit agency developing the property.
Despite the delay in opening the new store, Buchalter said he does not subscribe to the oft-repeated complaint that San Francisco is a difficult place to do business.
“It’s a different place,” he said moments before Mayor Agnos declared Friday “Standard Brands Paint Day” in San Francisco. “It all depends on your attitude. If you come in and say, ‘I’m going to do it my way come hell or high water,’ you’re going to have problems.”
