Adam L. Brinklow

3 days ago | thefrisc.com | Adam L. Brinklow

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.

1 week ago | thefrisc.com | Adam L. Brinklow

Behind the plywood that covers the entrance of the historic Castro Theatre, a major renovation is underway. Berkeley-based Another Planet Entertainment, now the venue’s operator, has posted a notice asking the neighborhood’s forbearance (“please pardon our dust and noise”) and listing all the coming rewards: “much-needed” mural and plaster restoration, state-of-the-art heating and cooling, added bathroom capacity, and more.

3 weeks ago | thefrisc.com | Adam L. Brinklow

In 2011, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors approved one of the city’s most ambitious housing plans, an overhaul of the 1940s-era Parkmerced, a small neighborhood next to San Francisco State University. The redevelopment was supposed to yield about 5,700 new homes and replace 1,500 more from Parkmerced’s aging stock, a remarkable bounty given how the city’s west side had for decades resisted new development. Fourteen years later – nothing.

1 month ago | thefrisc.com | Adam L. Brinklow

In 2024, San Francisco built only 1,735 new homes, the lowest figure in a dozen years. This year, economic uncertainty and Trump tariff pandemonium continue to suppress construction. It will take a miracle for SF to create the 82,000 new homes by 2031 that the city would like to see. A decade’s worth of changes to state law meant to promote more housing haven’t increased production, thanks in part to the pandemic and post-pandemic economic doldrums.

1 month ago | thefrisc.com | Adam L. Brinklow

Last week, San Francisco planners unveiled a new map meant to make room for tens of thousands of new homes, especially in low-rise western neighborhoods and along busy commercial corridors. The plan comes two years after officials promised to make room for more than 80,000 new homes by the end of 2031, more than half of them affordable.