Marina Safeway Housing Project: What the 848-Home Plan Means

From 2023 through 2025, San Francisco Planning counted 36 homes completed from new construction in the Marina. One proposal at 15 Marina Blvd. would add 848. That is the Safeway across the street from Fort Mason. The city's deadline to approve or deny it falls around mid-November. A federal lawsuit is trying to stop it. And no construction timeline exists.

For anyone weighing a Marina condo or home this fall, these two numbers explain each other. The neighborhood barely adds housing. The Safeway towers are a one-off that got to this size through a narrow legal window. Even on the fastest track, they are years from putting a single new front door on the market. The Marina you can buy into today is the existing resale stock, and that stock is not growing.

Three years, 36 new homes

SF Planning's annual Housing Inventory tracks production for each of the city's analysis neighborhoods. For the Marina, the new-construction count is short.

The net-gain column runs a little higher than new construction because it includes alterations, such as units added inside existing buildings. Even so, the neighborhood gained 66 homes across three years. The Safeway proposal is more than 23 times the Marina's entire 2023 to 2025 new-construction output. Align Real Estate's David Balducci put it this way in a statement quoted by the San Francisco Public Press: the project would "deliver more homes than have been built in this neighborhood in the past 20 years."

For a buyer, the supply side of the Marina is close to frozen. The homes for sale in any given month are almost entirely homes that already exist, sold by people who already own them.

How one parcel got to 848

The scale of the Safeway plan comes from timing. The Family Zoning Plan was adopted by the Board of Supervisors on December 9, 2025, and signed by the mayor on December 12. It raised allowed heights on commercial and transit corridors on the north and west sides of the city, including the Marina. According to the Public Press, Align filed its Safeway proposal "just weeks before that plan went into effect." That timing let the project use the older zoning code plus state density bonuses, so it could propose something "far taller and denser than the new plan would have allowed."

The project is moving under AB 2011, a 2022 state law. As the San Francisco Chronicle explained it, the law lets qualifying housing on commercially zoned sites skip much of the local discretionary review if it meets the eligibility rules and objective standards. Dan Sider, chief of staff at the Planning Department, summed up the city's position in an email to the Public Press: "if the project follows the rules we are bound to approve it."

The plan has changed along the way. The first version called for 790 apartments in towers of 25 and 22 stories. The revision Align filed in July lowered the towers to 22 and 18 stories and raised the total to 848 homes, still with 86 below-market-rate units. SF YIMBY reported the maximum height at 258 feet. The revision also shifted the unit mix toward larger homes. Two-bedroom units rose to 212 from 132, and some four-bedrooms were added. Parking dropped to 340 spaces from 473.

Supervisor Stephen Sherrill and the Marina Community Association both oppose the Safeway proposal. The association backed the Family Zoning Plan after working with Sherrill on height limits it considered reasonable. "We went parcel by parcel through the whole city," Sherrill told the Public Press. "To me, keeping with that vision is very important." The new zoning sets the expected scale for the neighborhood, and the Safeway sits well above it, permitted under the rules that applied before.

The clock, step by step

The project is further along than a proposal and further from construction than the headlines suggest. Here is the sequence as reported:

1. August 13, 2026. Planning determined the project meets AB 2011's eligibility requirements. The Chronicle called this "the first and more consequential of the two 90-day stages" of review.
2. Around mid-November. The department then has 90 days to formally approve or deny the project on a ministerial basis, meaning it checks the plan against the written rules. Counting from August 13, that window closes in mid-November. As of the Chronicle's September 14 report, final approval had not been granted.
3. September 11, 2026. The YesAnd Foundation, Neighborhoods United San Francisco and four Marina residents filed suit in federal court. The suit names Align, the city, PG&E and Safeway parent Albertsons. It argues the project was improperly found eligible for AB 2011 and asks the court to halt it until further environmental review is done.
4. After approval. Align would still need building permits. In that more detailed process the city reviews construction and site-safety plans. Construction drawings must be prepared and reviewed before any work starts.
5. During construction. According to KQED, Align said the Safeway would close during construction and a new grocery store would open in the development. The project has no construction timeline or cost estimate yet.

Put those steps together and even an approval in November leaves the 848 homes at the start of a long, unscheduled run of permits and construction. The first change neighbors would see is the Safeway closing for construction, and that date has not been set.

Where the new zoning is actually producing filings

If the Safeway is an exception, the Family Zoning Plan should show what normal looks like. So far, its early projects have come in small and mostly on the west side.

• 230 Anza St., Lone Mountain and Inner Richmond area. On July 23, 2026, the Planning Commission approved an eight-unit, eight-story building from IvyHills LLC with two deed-restricted affordable units, according to the SF Standard. The Standard described it as the first project under the plan.
• 2800 Geary Blvd. Updated plans under the Housing Choice-SF program call for 49 units in seven stories.
• 5420 Geary Blvd., Richmond. Preliminary plans propose 42 units over ground-floor retail. The application leaves open whether it will use state density bonus or Family Zoning.
• 2513 Irving St., Inner Sunset. Nine market-rate apartments in three four-story buildings.
• 1201 Greenwich St., Russian Hill. Plans for the Tamalpais Apartments, published ahead of a project review meeting and before any formal application, show a three-story addition with eight apartments. The project could use Housing Choice-SF.
• 1301 Van Ness Ave. Preliminary permits filed this month invoke Housing Choice-SF for a 36-story, 443-unit tower.

Most of these are counted in single or double digits, and the closest one to the Marina is a pre-application addition on Russian Hill. Van Ness is the outlier in size. The plan does allow six- to eight-story buildings on major transit and commercial streets, with taller buildings at key intersections. But as of this month, those higher limits have not produced a filing on Chestnut or Lombard that would change the Marina's supply.

What a buyer is competing with this fall

A fixed supply would matter less in a slow market. This fall's market is not slow. In August 2026, the California Association of Realtors put San Francisco County's unsold inventory index at 1.3 months, down from 2.3 months in August 2025. Median time on market was 34 days. The county's median price for existing single-family homes that month was $1,875,000, up 25% from August 2025. That figure covers detached homes only, not condos.

Condos, the main housing type around the Marina's commercial streets, are tighter still. The SF Standard reported on September 20 that citywide condo inventory was down 50% from a year earlier. In the same piece it reported that one in three San Francisco homes sells all cash. One agent quoted in that story described the gap: "A financed transaction takes longer to close, while a cash offer can close in under two weeks."

Here is how those numbers line up for a Marina buyer. Citywide inventory is low. The neighborhood adds a few new homes a year. The one large project is tied up in approvals and a lawsuit, and it has no build schedule. Waiting for new supply here means waiting years. A financed buyer improves their chances with what can be controlled now: loan approval in hand early, a clear read on any HOA documents, and offer terms that close the timing gap with cash buyers.

A few common questions

Will the Marina Safeway close soon? Not as of current reporting. Align has said the store would close once construction begins and a new grocery would open in the building. Construction requires final approval, building permits and reviewed construction drawings first, and no timeline has been published.

Would the project be this tall under today's zoning? According to the Public Press, the proposal is "far taller and denser than the new plan would have allowed." It moved ahead under the earlier code because it was filed before the Family Zoning Plan took effect.

Where can I see what the new zoning allows on a specific block? SF Planning publishes the adopted maps and program details on its Family Zoning Plan page. Anyone weighing a purchase near a commercial corridor should check the parcel there and confirm what it means for their situation with a land-use attorney or the Planning Department. This post is general information, not legal advice.

If you're comparing a Marina condo against options in Russian Hill or Pacific Heights and want to know how the Safeway decision and the city's tight condo inventory affect a specific building, Selling San Francisco can walk through the recent sales and the offer strategy with you. Let's Connect.