The long-running fight over the Marina Safeway site just hit a major milestone. The San Francisco Planning Department has issued a notice deeming the proposed 25-story tower at 11-15 Marina Boulevard eligible for approval under California’s AB 2011, triggering a state-mandated clock on the dispute. If the schedule holds, the city could be forced to take final action by August on a project that would replace the longtime Marina Safeway with roughly 790 apartments and a larger ground-floor grocery. Align Real Estate is the project sponsor, and Arquitectonica is the project’s designer.
Official notice and timeline
According to SF YIMBY, the Planning Department has published a "notice of conditional Project Eligibility" under AB 2011 and stated that staff "must complete any necessary design review within 180 days of application submittal." In practical terms, that notice creates a firm deadline: the city now has until early August to wrap up design review and issue a Notice of Final AB 2011 Approval.
Project scale and program
Local coverage by NBC Bay Area shows the proposal would produce about 790 rental apartments, including 86 deed-restricted units for very-low-income households, with the taller eastern portion of the complex rising to roughly 297 feet. Align has framed the plan as a way to add housing and union construction jobs on a Marina waterfront commercial site that has seen little new multifamily construction for decades.
Design, square footage and amenities
Project documents and the Planning Department’s notice describe a total development size just under 1 million square feet: about 721,120 square feet of housing, a 63,220-square-foot replacement grocery and a 161,020-square-foot subterranean garage, according to SF YIMBY. Arquitectonica’s renderings depict two towers rising from a shared podium wrapped around a podium-top courtyard, with a lap pool, pavilion areas, a yoga space and a multipurpose lawn. Plans also show 362 bicycle spaces along with both residential and retail parking. The project would require demolition of the existing 1959 Safeway designed by Wurster, Bernardi & Emmons, a detail that has sharpened preservationist concerns.
Local reaction and politics
The proposal has already sparked intense neighborhood pushback and political worry. Residents and preservation advocates have protested the loss of the mid-century Safeway, and Mayor Daniel Lurie has publicly criticized the scale of the tower, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. At the same time, Align’s previously disclosed labor agreements with the Building and Construction Trades Council and the NorCal Carpenters, reported last December, position the developer to meet AB 2011’s labor requirements and limit City Hall’s leverage to slow the project.
What happens next
Align must now submit full application materials, after which the Planning Department will conduct design review and issue an AB 2011 decision on the state-imposed timetable. Reporting by The Real Deal notes that Align has advanced a narrower reading of AB 2011’s deadlines, arguing for a quicker completeness finding and approval schedule than city staff has outlined.
Legal and policy stakes
AB 2011, the Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act of 2022, combines streamlined approvals with strict labor and training rules, including prevailing-wage requirements and apprenticeship or training commitments for larger projects, according to materials from Assemblymember Buffy Wicks’ office. Assemblymember Wicks' office describes the law as an effort to speed up housing construction while locking in higher wages and benefits for construction workers, the very framework Align is relying on to qualify the Marina proposal for fast-track review.
For nearby residents and preservation groups, the case will help determine how far state streamlining can go in overriding local design and historic-resource objections on a high-profile waterfront parcel. For advocates of denser housing in wealthy, low-rise neighborhoods, the Planning Department’s notice represents a concrete step toward nearly 800 new homes in the Marina.
Key details remain unsettled, including construction financing, the timeline for replacing the operating Safeway and a target start date for building. Both city statements and the developer’s comments so far suggest those dates depend on the outcome of the AB 2011 process and subsequent permits. NBC Bay Area has reported that the developer has not yet announced a closure date for the current store.
