If you think of Fisherman’s Wharf, and visions of clam chowder in a sourdough bowl and Pier 39 sea lions make you smile, then good news. San Francisco, desperate for a post-pandemic recovery, is leaning hard into the wharf’s status as its top tourist draw and huge economic engine.
But wait, there’s more. San Francisco also sees Fisherman’s Wharf as a prime place to net potentially thousands of new homes. In particular, planners have mapped out about 20 blocks between the waterfront and North Beach where hotels, low-rise apartments, parking lots, and old commercial spaces mainly hold sway.
If city legislators approve the planning proposal in coming months, it would loosen rules across the city, including a new height ceiling of either 65 feet or 85 feet for housing in Fisherman’s Wharf. (That’s about half the height of the wharf’s latest attraction, the SkyStar ferris wheel.)
This wouldn’t just affect some people’s waterfront views, but also alter many San Franciscans’ long-held views about the wharf — from tourist trap to home turf. And unlike previous years, the wharf’s home supervisor is diving in headfirst on housing.
“More density near Fisherman’s Wharf is going to be crucial,” Sup. Danny Sauter tells The Frisc. A North Beach local, Sauter represents the complicated quilt of District 3.
He won his seat last November with a pro-housing message, even though the district includes Russian Hill, North Beach, and Telegraph Hill, where preservation advocates, including Sauter’s predecessor Aaron Peskin, have held the line against new homes for decades.
If D3 is going to contribute a solid share of housing to SF’s ambitious goal of making way for more than 82,000 new units by 2031, city planners agree with Sauter that the wharf is a prime spot.
Building up to eight stories there — if not on the water, then within a couple blocks — would seem less controversial than, say, doing so in North Beach.
New housing could also help revitalize the part of the neighborhood where, post-COVID, it’s “really been challenging” to bring back business and tourism, says Moe Jamil, a deputy city attorney. Jamil lost to Sauter in last year’s District 3 supervisor race and says he campaigned door-to-door in Fisherman’s Wharf.
But as a resident of Russian Hill, where obstructed bay views sparked SF’s historic development backlash in the 1960s, Jamil also has a prediction: going higher near the wharf will reignite waterfront development wars.
When the Fontana Towers went up near Ghirardelli Square in 1962, the city reacted by capping heights across most neighborhoods at 40 feet.
More than 60 percent of SF voters rejected it. Last year, Peskin rallied his board colleagues to clamp down on a proposal for a 24-story tower at the base of Telegraph Hill.
Other bayfront proposals have turned into big fights. In 2013, opponents dubbed a housing proposal at 8 Washington near the Ferry Building the “Wall on the Waterfront” and put the project on the ballot.
Opponents of these projects have decried the prospect of hill dwellers losing their incredible views and San Francisco losing its character. But now they say they’re also fighting for the city’s shrinking working class.
Getting priorities straight
Most San Franciscans probably don’t associate Fisherman’s Wharf with working-class and low-income renters. But its median household income is $88,000 a year, about 60 percent of the city average, according to the Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District.
Most of the wharf is what the city calls a “priority equity community.” The term refers to neighborhoods with many households that have “minority or low-income status, seniors, people who have limited English proficiency, [and] people who have disabilities.” Parts of the Mission, Bayview, Chinatown, and other neighborhoods – about 38 percent of SF’s population – fall within the designation.
City data identifies the wharf area as 40 percent low-income households. “You’ve got a lot of families and a lot of immigrants, not just in North Beach Place” — a public housing complex that dates back to the 1950s — “but in those Bay and Stockton apartments,” says Jamil, referring to buildings like the Northpoint Apartments, with more than 500 units spread over two blocks. “A lot of that is affordable housing and rent control.”
San Francisco has some of the strongest renter protections and lowest eviction rates in the nation. For example. tenants in rent-controlled homes displaced by redevelopment have the right to return to the new building.
Planners say more protections will accompany the new zoning rules. They unveiled a few proposals in February, such as the right of tenants to stay in their home up to six months before demolition. Lisa Chen, the planner in charge of the new zoning map, said more are coming: “We have heard loud and clear that tenant protections are a major concern.” City lawmakers voted this week to schedule their first committee hearings about the housing overhaul, although no date is set yet.
The wharf’s equity designation hasn’t escaped the notice of one of SF’s leading density skeptics. “The Planning Department and Sup. Sauter are targeting [Fisherman’s Wharf residents] for displacement,” Lori Brooke, community organizer and cofounder of Neighborhoods United, which has pushed back against the city’s upzoning plans.
Brooke notes that North Beach Place, the public housing complex, sits within the new map’s allowable redevelopment boundaries. “That’s not equity, that’s exploitation,” she says.
Despite its name, the North Beach Place complex is technically in Fisherman’s Wharf, near the line between the two neighborhoods. And as Brooke points out, it’s within a proposed upzoning boundary.
The complex was built in the 1950s. In those days, SF projects were segregated by race and neighborhood — the NAACP sued in 1953 — so North Beach Place was exclusively for (white) Italian renters, just as the Ping Yuen apartments were “Chinese only” and the Westside Courts for “negroes only,” as written on the leases.
After federal funding dried up in the 1970s, the buildings fell into disrepair. SF decided to demolish them and start anew, relocating every resident to a different public housing site with a promised right of return. (In a 2004 story about that return, the Chronicle called the previous version “a hulking public housing project, complete with cockroaches, raw sewage leaks and thugs who’d mug tourists.”)
We are not interested in unnecessarily disrupting and destabilizing tenants of affordable housing.
mayor’s office of housing and community development spokesperson anne stanley
In his 2019 book After the Projects, MIT’s Lawrence Vale reported only 36 percent of the residents moved back, although in many cases they declined the city’s offers.
Today’s North Beach Place sports open courtyards and playground equipment, nothing like the “hulking” profile of yesteryear. Rents start at $687 a month, compared to nearly $3,000 citywide median for a single-bedroom apartment.
The city could technically build up to eight stories there under the proposed zoning changes. But North Beach Place is in good condition, and the city is sensitive to its history. “We are not interested in unnecessarily disrupting and destabilizing tenants of affordable housing,” says Anne Stanley, spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Housing & Community Development.
The Frisc interviewed several North Beach Place residents. None knew about the proposed zoning changes, and none said they were worried. Most did not want to be named or quoted, but one young man named Jay, a two-year resident, shrugged when reviewing the proposal. “This place is fine for getting me to whatever comes next,” he said.
Not very residential
SF isn’t going to open the door for more height and density in the Mission, Bayview, Tenderloin, and other priority equity neighborhoods. Why isn’t it letting Fisherman’s Wharf off the hook?
Senior environmental planner Josh Pollak tells The Frisc that the Fisherman’s Wharf equity designation isn’t as hard-line. While it’s a low-income neighborhood, it’s also lightly populated – about 2,200 people, according to the Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District. The FWCBD also estimates only 5 percent of neighborhood lots are residential.
Via email, FWCBD spokesperson Cecil Gregoire says the housing plan is an opportunity to “complete the neighborhood.” Gregoire also notes there are problems to solve, such as transit. The poky F-Market streetcar line won’t be adequate for all these new residents; many district members have been stumping for a Central Subway extension for years.
SF Planning director Rich Hillis, tells The Frisc that the zoning process sometimes has conflicting standards. Yes, Fisherman’s Wharf is a priority equity neighborhood. But it’s also among the “housing opportunity areas” (formerly known as well-resourced neighborhoods) where the state says SF should encourage more construction because of better access to amenities, schools, and transit.
In other words, planners believe the upside of more Fisherman’s Wharf housing outweighs equity concerns, especially given many of the neighborhood’s lower-income residents (in North Beach Place) aren’t likely in danger of displacement via demolition.
That belief will come up for debate as the new map and rules enter a series of hearings in coming months. (The Board of Supervisors must approve it all by the end of January 2026.) Defending renters against displacement is a bedrock argument against new development, no matter the protections in place or promised. Another argument is about character – “what makes San Francisco special,” as Brooke puts it.
In the case of Fisherman’s Wharf, then, here’s a dilemma for city officials in coming months: empty storefronts, chain hotels, fast food, souvenir shops, and parking lots are part of the neighborhood character. If more apartments supplant, or just supplement, some of these spaces — and provide homes for hundreds more San Franciscans, including people who work in those same hotels and shops — would the wharf still be special?
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