It’s not easy building things in San Francisco.
Noe Valley’s neighbors are at odds with a developer over the fate of two so-called Quake Shacks — built as the town coped with a massive homelessness crisis after the 1906 earthquake. reported the San Francisco Chronicle.
Developer John Shrader has backed out of an original plan that called for the cottages at 369 Valley Street to be demolished to make way for a large mansion on the property. Instead, he’s attempting to incorporate the two structures into the design of a more modest 2,700-square-foot home, the outlet reported. Part of the plan calls for the cabins to be moved onto the property.
“I understand that Quake Shacks is historical in nature and we’ve changed our plans half a dozen times, but there are still people who oppose this project,” he told the Chronicle. “I do not know what it is. If it feels like it – do you know San Francisco is just anti-development? Maybe that’s what’s going on here.”
Critics, meanwhile, say the quake shelters – thousands of which were hastily built to house the poor and working class made homeless by the devastating earthquake – should be left alone.
“History is what this is about,” John Blackburn, a historian at Quake Shack, told the Chronicle. “They helped the working class get their first homes back then, they represent the resilience of San Francisco, and today very few of them remain. …
“[T]Hey are really important. We must preserve them.”
Shrader, who has been trying to build a home on the property for nine years, will have his plan reviewed at a hearing before the city’s zoning administrator sometime this month, the outlet said.
Regardless of who prevails, the outcome will almost certainly be contested, with neighborhood and historical groups lining up to keep the shacks unscathed.
“In our view, the huts may not survive a move, and even if they do, they may not be recognizable as earthquake huts,” Marc Norton, who lives across the lot, told the Chronicle. “That is not acceptable.”
– Ted Shiner
