SF has a new accelerated landmarking program adopted to preserve historic and cultural resources in balance with updated zoning rules intended to spur housing construction
St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church — the cornerstone of which was laid by German immigrants in 1907 — is a jewel box in San Francisco’s Mission District that harbors banks of colorful stained-glass windows in its spare carved-wood sanctuary.
The two-story Gothic-revival structure at the corner of Dolores and 16th streets is one of a slew of properties in The City that have been nominated for greater protection as part of an accelerated new landmarking program adopted to balance zoning rules intended to spur housing construction. “My concern is that we would end up seeing demolition — ministerial demolition — of historic resources without anybody ever having gotten around to evaluate whether there was something there worth preserving,” said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who spearheaded the landmarking program.Mandelman, the president of the Board of Supervisors, pushed to speed up The City’s landmarking process in connection with Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Family Zoning plan — which was adopted in December — in order to avoid the ministerial demolition of historic resources. Lurie’s zoning package aims to satisfy a state requirement that The City plan for construction of 82,069 additional housing units by 2031, plus a 15% buffer, for a total of 94,300 homes. The new landmarking program encourages all of The City’s 11 supervisors to nominate batches of properties, rather than individual sites, for designation as “article 10 landmarks,” a reference to part of The City’s planning code. Among other things, the label brings heightened review for proposed alterations or demolitions. So far, Mandelman and three other supervisors have nominated a combined 75 properties for the designation, starting with 16 from Mandelman, who began community outreach last year. Next came District 11 Supervisor Chyanne Chen with 1 site, followed by Mandelman with 25 more sites, District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill with 18 sites, and District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter, who nominated 15 properties this week. “These are buildings that I think people would already kind of assume would have already been landmarked or deemed as historic sites,” Sauter said. “This is a chance to celebrate them, a chance to honor them.” Typically, The City in the past has designated between five and 10 local landmarks a year, according to the Planning Department. There are 321 individual landmarks and 16 landmark districts in The City that are considered unique and irreplaceable assets based on factors such as historic and cultural associations, architecture and design.Pastor Beate Chun of St. Matthews called the prospect of landmarking her church “wonderful.” “It’s in line with what the nature of this church is,” said Chun, herself a native of Germany. “It is a historic building, and it is also a historic resource for The City, for the community, for the neighborhood, for the older Germans, for the new Germans.” St. Matthews offers bilingual services in English and in German — and occasionally just in German. The number of regular worshipers these days is small, but there are many more who feel connected to the church for various reasons, Chun said. The sanctuary has outstanding acoustics and is used by different groups, and it also has an impressive pipe organ, she said. The City’s new landmarking process thus far has focused on sites already identified as “category A” historical resources in earlier surveys, with special consideration given to places connected to “underrepresented” groups, such as LGBTQ and American Indian communities. “We’re looking at all of the existing historic properties,” said Rich Sucre, deputy director of San Francisco Planning. “It’s a very surgical landmarking program.” San Francisco is divided into about 880,000 parcels of real estate, and most have not been surveyed for historical significance. Ex // Top Stories Billionaire-tax author pushing for bigger, broader levy on the ultrawealthy UC Berkeley professor Brian Galle recently unveiled plan for increase at the federal level For what — and for whom — is SF's public art? As private displays prevail and public programs suffer, societal divisions grow Why mega-IPOs from OpenAI, SpaceX could hamper broader IPO market The sheer size of the potential offerings from major firms is likely to suck the air out of the room for other public offerings, market watchers say In addition to encouraging the submission of batches of properties for consideration, rather than individual sites, the amount of documentation required for landmarking has been slashed, Sucre said. Planners used to write a 40 to 60 page “thesis,” but now they are writing about two pages, he said. The process for designating a local landmark nevertheless remains “robust,” Sucre said, involving community meetings and hearings about individual properties before The City’s Historic Preservation Commission and the Board of Supervisors. So far, the accelerated landmarking program has not been especially controversial, although the Archdiocese of San Francisco did request some of its properties not be nominated, Sucre said. State law allows places of worship to request exclusion from landmark designation. Steve Shoemaker, a volunteer with Grow the Richmond — a chapter of YIMBY Action — has asked for the removal of multiple properties floated for consideration at a city meeting regarding District 1 on The City's west side. Shoemaker said in an interview that he is waiting expectantly to see what gets proposed. He expressed skepticism about the use of historical designations other than in “a truly exceptional situation,” such as the stately former Fourth Church of Christ Scientist building at 300 Funston Avenue that houses the Internet Archive. “An article 10 historical designation can make it much more difficult to develop housing at a given site, adding new layers of approvals,” Shoemaker said. “Given the scale of San Francisco’s housing affordability crisis, making new housing harder to build is the opposite of what we should be doing.” Woody LaBounty, president and CEO of SF Heritage, credited Mandelman for initiating the accelerated landmarking process, which he said has been done “very thoughtfully.” “We’re in such a rush these days to streamline housing, because everybody wants more housing,” LaBounty said. “But we’ve never really done any work to streamline designation of historic spaces, and that is also a long and cumbersome process.” It has typically taken 18 months to two years to get a property designated as a landmark, LaBounty said. The new landmarking program aims to bring that down to about 9 to 10 months. LaBounty also praised Sauter for embracing the opportunity to designate specific properties in light of the controversy kicked up last year by a proposal to form a 626-building North Beach historic district. That effort — which critics said could limit housing development — was put on hold after Mayor Daniel Lurie asked the State Historical Resources Commission to delay a hearing. While he’s pleased with the speedier landmarking program, LaBounty said, he’s concerned that it relies on individual supervisors’ “interest and goodwill.”Sauter said his district has 77 existing article 10 landmarks, the most of any district before the adoption of the Family Zoning plan.In District 2, Supervisor Sherrill’s nominations include: Sherill said a solicitation from his office also generated suggestions from the public for landmarking more than a dozen more properties, though not all might be good candidates.
St. Matthew's Lutheran Church Beate Chun Danny Sauter Stephen Sherrill
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