By Thomas K. Pendergast

District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan negotiated a delay from the San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission to consider giving the Alexandria Theatre “landmark status,” after announcing the theater building’s owners agreed to work with her office on a residential housing development plan.

This announcement came more than a month after the owner, Yorke Lee of Timespace Alexandria LLC, went before the San Francisco Board of Appeals asking them to rescind a Notice of Violation (NOV) issued by the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI) last January after storms that month made the blade sign of the theater building unsafe.

At a press conference in front of the theater on Sept. 19, Chan and Lee announced they have tentatively agreed to support a 76-unit development within the theater building, although details of the plan have yet to be worked out.

“We’re going to have a discussion, with the help of our city attorney, with our Office of Economic Workforce Development team to negotiate a development agreement to make this a site where we will have 76 units of housing, with affordable housing units on site, which is what the Richmond really needs,” Chan said. “At the same time, with the help of the City and working with Mr. Lee and his group, how do we also preserve that history and the iconic features like the marquee and the sign?

“How do we preserve it but also create some flexibility for housing and development, because that’s what we need and I think we can do that,” she said. “People said ‘that’s not possible. You can only have one or the other.’ We’re going to say that we’re going to work this together and work it out because we can do this.”

“This property, in order to be feasible to be developed, we know the neighborhood has many concerns,” Lee said. “If it stays vacant, it always has a lot of issues, so we understand. We are as concerned as everybody else.

“This is not an easy project. It’s a relatively big project,” he said. “And the beginning of this year, the storms happened. We know this blade sign was blown off. And we know we have to recover it for certain, basic historical elements and also how to do a project that can benefit everybody.”

On Aug. 16, Lee and his attorney Nick Colla went before the Board of Appeals asking to rescind a January NOV issued for “general negligence of maintaining and up keeping the subject historic property,” after DBI determined that the blade side hanging off the building above the marquee posed a public safety hazard.

“Ownership of the property is taking mitigating steps where they can, but we’re sort of hamstrung here,” Colla told the Board. “It still takes money to maintain a property and this property had been in a decrepit state for 20 years. It preceded this ownership group.

“They’re doing what they can to work with the City to make this a safe and habitable and active space but we’re hamstrung right now by our dealings with the City,” Colla said.

Timespace Alexandria LLC took possession of the property in 2015 (vacant since 2004) and Conditional Use Authorization for a development plan – which included swimming pools plus learning and business centers – was issued by the Planning Department in October 2019.

“The pandemic hit five months later; in the two-and-a-half years that application process took, financing fell through,” Colla said. “The lending circumstances changed. We submitted a subsequent application to explore a density bonus, but the City permitting process and dealing with the City was very difficult in the early stages of the pandemic. There’s a misconception here that my client is a derelict property owner, but I think the record will reflect that there have been substantial efforts throughout the process to find new ways to reactivate the space.

“We’ve met resistance from the City at every step of the way,” he said.

Tina Tam, the deputy zoning administrator for the SF Planning Department, claimed the resistance was actually coming from Timespace Alexandria LLC.

“Based upon numerous complaints filed with (DBI), there are serious concerns about the safety of this building,” Tam said.

“More recently, the property owner filed a permit to remove the blade sign in front of the theater, citing imminent public life-safety dangers,” she said. “Building demolition by neglect is a big concern for this building. We have seen in the past when property owners allow a building to deteriorate to the point that demolition becomes necessary or restoration becomes unreasonable.

“The NOV is clear that we want the property owners to comply with the recorded conditions. We want to see regular maintenance and upkeep of the theater, and the architectural features and the historic details be protected,” she explained. “What we’re asking for in the NOV is a defined schedule of when stabilization and protection of the building can happen. Despite numerous attempts and multiple enforcement notices, the property owner has not provided this information to us.”

Board of Appeals Commissioner Alex Lemberg acknowledged that Lee had submitted permits to the Planning Department and DBI; however, he did not see consistent work being done on those permits.

“Some of them were contingent on approvals on new scope of work that took two years,” Colla explained. “When they commenced work on restoration, they determined that their structural engineering estimates were off and they couldn’t move forward.”

Lee said they did do some work to maintain the property.

Lemberg asked if any of the permits were carried through to completion and finalized.

Colla said some of them the permitted work was completed and he said there was a “good faith” effort to follow through with the work.

Lemberg then referred to a list of permits the owner was issued.

“I think there’s one of them that was completed out of at least a dozen here,” Lemberg said. “I can’t agree with your assessment that that is a ‘good faith’ effort to act under these building permits.”

Tam said the department is asking Lee to take immediate action to keep the property safe and secured and to keep the theater from further deterioration until a future project is identified, approved and constructed.

“Their response to our request to date has been vague, non-specific and open-ended,” she said. “It’s clear that the property owner doesn’t want to commit to any construction and completion deadlines; not for assessing the physical and deteriorating conditions of the property, not for protecting the building from further decay and not for restoring the historic blade sign.”

The Board of Appeals unanimously voted to deny the appeal and uphold the NOV.

Meanwhile, the move to give the building landmark status has been continued to the Nov. 1 meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission.

“This is a historical resource site and you must recognize that’s what it is already,” Chan said at the Sept. 19 press conference. “We could go about landmarking this, but we could also go into the trajectory, which is what we’re announcing today, as exploring a development agreement, still preserving those characteristics that is already clearly defined and required to protect.

“But how do we work together to have a balanced approach to be able to move it forward?” Chan asked. “I do believe that it allows us to reinforce where the City is at, meaning that we want everyone to preserve the history of San Francisco because we deserve that.”