By Michael Toren : sfexaminer – excerpt (includes video)

Community leaders and a city supervisor gathered Friday morning in the Mission District to protest plans to build a nine-story condominium building on the site of a building destroyed in a fatal fire.

The lot at 22nd and Mission streets has been vacant since a four-alarm fire tore through a large, three-story mixed-use building there in January 2015, killing one resident and displacing some 60 others. That building was later demolished, leaving a fenced-off hole in the ground which can still be seen today… (more)

Canceled meeting on ‘Monster in the Mission’ development sparks dueling rallies

By Laura Waxmann : sfexaminer – excerpt

The sudden cancellation of a public hearing on a proposed 331-unit housing development at 1979 Mission St. laid bare deep divisions within the community over the project, despite recent revisions.

Plans for the development at the 16th and Mission Street Bart Plaza were first submitted by developer Maximus Real Estate Partners in 2013. From the onset they were challenged over their lack of affordability by community groups united as the Plaza 16 Coalition, who dubbed the project the “Monster in the Mission.”

Last year, the coalition asked the Planning Commission to hold a hearing on the project in the Mission District, so that community members could weigh in. But that meeting’s cancellation this week sparked two competing rallies Thursday — one led by Plaza 16, calling on the developer to provide a 100 percent affordable project, and the other organized by the Maximus-funded group Mission for All, aimed at moving the project forward as is… (more)

Preserving Neighborhoods