Supervisors continue appeal hearing for 3400 Cesar Chavez project after marathon public testimony

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors continued a prolonged public hearing on July 17 about the adequacy of a mitigated negative declaration for a proposed mixed-use project at 3400 Cesar Chavez Street, in the Mission District. The hearing, convened as an appeal of the Planning Department's environmental finding, drew hundreds of residents and more than two hours of board-level presentations, department briefings, and public testimony.

The project before the board: 7 Hills Properties proposed a mixed-use building that would place ground-floor retail (the sponsor described a single anchor retail space of roughly 12,000 square feet at times in the record) with residential units above. The sponsor's counsel described the scheme as roughly 60 residential units with a substantial fraction of two- and three-bedroom family units and said the developer voluntarily offered 15% of units as below-market-rate inclusionary housing, above the code baseline.

Why it matters: The appeal raises whether the Planning Department properly considered the project's potential to contribute to cumulative changes in land use and housing affordability in the Eastern Neighborhoods area plan. Appellants said the Department's document did not adequately analyze how new market-rate housing in the eastern Mission reduces the supply of sites available for deeply affordable housing, nor how that loss interacts with long-range rezoning work underway in the Eastern Neighborhoods program.

Arguments and evidence on the record - Appellant (Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition, represented by attorney Sue Hester): Argued the site had been coded as PDR in draft long-range maps, that the Planning Department's negative declaration did not incorporate the board's own prior direction (resolution 2660 Harrison) calling for cumulative analysis, and that the NEGDEC therefore failed to analyze the full environmental implications of new market-rate development on the neighborhood's ability to meet the city's housing goals. - Planning Department (Victoria Wise and project staff): Maintained that the project site was a retail use under the planning code rather than an industrial…