The Planning Commission voted unanimously Thursday night to approve Mission Gardens, a proposed Mission District housing project that it rejected in 2002. The unanimous vote followed an additional concession from the developer that lowered the income target for the 20% of affordable units from 85% to 80% of adjusted median income (city law allows 100% of area median to qualify as “affordable”).
Originally slated to feature 183 livable units and 26,000 square feet of combined retail/office space, new designs for the site at 1880 Mission St. include 194 dwelling units, no office space and only 8,536 square feet of retail space.
According to a document that developer Maxemin sent to Beyond Chron titled, “Summary of Concessions Made to community for 1880 Mission Armax Hearing at Planning Commission October 6,” although the city’s planning code requires that 12 percent of units be affordable units, the project would offer 20 percent. Also, while the law allows affordable units to be sold at 100 percent of the Average Median Income (AMI), Maxemin has agreed to sell his at 80 percent of AMI.
Opponents to the project, including organizations such as the Mission Economic Development Association, where activists wished to remain off the record, and the Mission Anti-displacement Coalition (MAC), felt that anything above 80% of median was too high.
Although activists like Nick Pagoulatos wanted to see the project serve those earning only 60 percent of median, the developer’s agreement to the 80% led the chief opponents of the project to grudgingly accept that they got the best possible deal.
The project’s contractor, Ruben Santana, President of Rubecon General Contracting, told Beyond Chron prior to the hearing that “militant attitudes” such as MAC’s and MEDA’s are what keep the bar for Mission residents so low. Santana, who was born and raised one block away from 1880 Mission St., said that many of those who appose the project and claim to be from the area actually are transplants in the community and do not in fact have their roots there.
“All [opponents] ever do is talk about the problems; they don’t try to find solutions,” Santana said. “What they need to do is find ways to steer people away from the depression and repression.”
Santana explained that he is trying to help raise the bar in the Mission by giving area residents first priority at the union jobs his projects create.
“I’d say that 75 percent of them are local residents, and their average wage rate is $70,000 per year,” said Santana. “
In addition to having a negative impact on low-income residents, MAC’s Pagoulatos said he fears that upscale development projects, such as Mission Gardens, would change the character and ethnic flavor of the mission that so many people have come to value. But those in favor of the project point out that Rosas-Maxemin is himself a Latino, born in Mexico, and will actually maintain, if not enhance the neighborhood’s integrity.
“It will accentuate the Latino character because it’s a Mexican design,” said Santana of the project.
Perhaps even more important than retaining the area’s character is what supporters such as Jose Moreno are saying that Mission Gardens will do for improving the safety at and around the site. Project coordinator at the Housing Action Coalition, Moreno described the current status of the site as blighted. There is little traffic there after 5 p.m. and so the streets become controlled by criminal activity, which causes neglect.
Both Moreno and Santana spoke to the fact that there is an elementary school one block away from 1880 Mission St. and children currently are exposed to the previous night’s drug dealings as they walk to school. The site currently is being used to house a dying printing plant inside explained Santana. Outside, the parking lot attracts drug dealers.
“So the children on their way to school have to walk over needles, urine and broken bottle,” Santana said.
That is why the principal of the elementary school has written a letter to the commission in support of the project, said Moreno. She, and other supporters, including the Mission Hiring Hall, the Mission Neighborhood Center and the Latino Steering Committee believe that Mission Gardens would be the landmark gateway into the Mission that Rosas-Maxemin says it would.
“It will beautify the area by pushing way the dealers and solicitors that stay out there,” Said Santana.
Whether Santana’s prediction proves accurate will be known when the project is built. Construction will not likely be completed for at least three years.
