By Neal Wong

More than 100 people filled the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) board meeting this evening after rallying outside district headquarters, demanding a public process before any decision is made about 741 30th Ave., the Outer Richmond property that has housed The Richmond Neighborhood Center since 1980.

The crowd gathered days after the district told the center it would release a request for proposals (RFP) to gauge developer interest in the site. Staff were notified Thursday that the RFP would go out the next day.

It ultimately did not, following social media posts and community advocacy, and center leaders welcomed the pause Friday while saying it settles nothing about programs at the 30th Ave. site, where the nonprofit’s lease is set to expire on June 30, 2027.

The center has been in the process of building a family resource center in its Outer Richmond location, a hub where families can pick up diapers, backpacks and other supplies – in addition to getting connected to public services, without first having to figure out which agency handles their problem. The center has been stockpiling resources in anticipation of the launch, which is now uncertain. 

The site also hosts food programs four days a week, including: home delivery, a general food pantry, a second pantry program with culturally-appropriate ingredients, after-school and youth workforce programs, in addition to subleasing the space to a preschool. 

Headquartered at this site, the organization serves more than 6,000 youth, families and seniors and partners with 12 SFUSD schools.

Michelle Cusano has worked at the organization for 26 years, including throughout the past decade as executive director.

“It’s a place where young people grow, families receive support, seniors find connection, neighbors get food and community happens every single day,” Cusano said. “Our community protected this place before. Now it’s our turn.”

The property is one of 14 sites the district asked real estate advisory firm Century | Urban to evaluate. The firm’s final report, dated May 5, groups 741 30th Ave. with four other properties under a redevelopment strategy for housing and sketches a six-story, 119-unit market-rate apartment building on the site, with ground lease revenue to the district valued at $2 million to $2.8 million over 15 years. The report places the site in a second phase of developer solicitations beginning around late 2027.

The same report values the center’s tenancy well below what the district could charge someone else. It puts the blended rent at 741 30th Ave. at $4.70 per square foot a year against $17 per square foot if the buildings were re-leased at market rates, a difference that would lift annual rental revenue from about $24,000 to roughly $244,000 and turn a negative 15-year net present value of $1.4 million into a positive $510,000. The report also projects capital needs at the aging site averaging $135,000 a year.

The district says no final decision has been made about the property.

“There are no current plans to redevelop that property at 741 30th Avenue,” SFUSD said in a statement. “SFUSD has not yet released a Request for Proposal for Property Development and we can confirm that the property that Richmond District Neighborhood Center is leasing is not on the upcoming one.”

The district said 14 sites were identified as potential opportunity sites in November 2025 by a third-party analyst, and that a site visit was conducted at the Outer Richmond location that month, with notice to the center.  Optimizing current buildings is one strategy for supporting the district, the statement said, and more information will follow as an amended RFP moves forward.

Center leaders say the district did not communicate any of this to them. Cusano said she has been seeking a lease extension since at least early 2023, in part to unlock a $250,000 City grant to rebuild a ramp to one of the three buildings on the site. Instead of an extension, she said, staff were told at an Aug. 14 meeting that the district would solicit developer proposals.

“They released the portfolio analysis, unbeknownst to anyone,” Cusano said. “However, they said it’s public, so it was on their website, as if that’s public notice enough, to a tenant who has had a long-term lease.”

The Richmond Neighborhood Center’s Chief Strategy Officer Cliff Yee spent nearly nine years on the organization’s board before joining the staff.

“You can’t simply pick up 45 years of community infrastructure and move it somewhere else,” Yee said. “Finding a space in San Francisco that is large enough for these programs, accessible to the people we serve and affordable on a nonprofit budget would be extraordinarily difficult. That’s why the future of 741 matters so much.”

Yee said the organization understands the district needs revenue and the City needs housing. What frustrates him, he said, is that a partner of more than four decades was never asked what would happen to the people who rely on the site.

“The lack of transparency just should have never happened,” Yee said. “The lack of community conversation should have never happened.”

SFUSD affirmed in its statement that the center “was informed of” the site visit last November “as part of the strategy to optimize our portfolio.”

Hene Kelly, a co-founder of the center, helped organize the campaign that kept this building in community hands in the late 1970s, when a developer eyed the block for high-rise condominiums. Her husband, then a union president, negotiated with board members and reporters for nearly a year.

“This is a place where my children came,” Kelly said. “My grandchildren came. All the people in the neighborhood came.”

Nicholas Belloni has lived near the center for 50 years and is a past president of a Richmond District parents association.

“This neighborhood center is the soul of our district,” Belloni said. “It’s after-school programs, it’s preschool, it’s the food pantry, which feeds 1,200 families a week. If that goes, where are those people going to get their food?”

Allison Wong, a food pantry volunteer, addressed the crowd at the board meeting in Cantonese and English.

“I’ve been volunteering with this community for years,” Wong said. “So then I understand so many people from this community need the services from the center. Without them, I don’t know how people from this district can survive.”

Cusano said the immediate risk is the City grant. Without a lease extension, the center would lose the money for the ramp and begin searching for space in a neighborhood with few buildings that can provide roughly 18,000 square feet within walking distance of the seniors who arrive at the pantry pulling carts.

“We will not give up until the future of 741 is back where it belongs,” Cusano said. “And that’s in the hands of the community.”

The center’s lease is set to expire next June. SFUSD has still not provided any information about extending it, or what pausing the RFP means or when/if it will be unpaused.SFUSD says it will provide more information in the coming days. This story will be updated.