A 101-year-old senior campus in the Marina is being asked to pull off a classic San Francisco trick: squeeze in more homes without losing the historic showpiece everyone recognizes. Heritage on the Marina is floating a major makeover that would keep its 1925 Julia Morgan landmark intact while boosting the campus from 76 residences to 122.
According to The Real Deal, the Perry Building, which now holds 56 residences, would be demolished. The Julia Morgan Building’s 20 apartments would be restored and reconfigured into 10 larger residences, and a single new eight-story senior housing building would rise where much of the newer campus currently sits.
The heart of the property is a three-story brick structure designed by Julia Morgan, California’s first licensed female architect, completed in 1925 for the San Francisco Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Heritage has teamed up with Sequoia Living, whose CEO Sara McVey says the plan is meant to both preserve a piece of San Francisco history and keep serving older adults and the surrounding Marina community.
Heritage has been hinting at a campus overhaul for several years. On its Heritage on the Marina future-plans page, the community says the work is expected to increase care suites, upgrade resident amenities and add underground parking access as it adapts for current and future residents.
The Latest Design Is A Major Departure
The newest concept looks very different from the version that went through the city’s environmental review process. A CEQAnet filing described a plan to tear down two newer buildings and replace them with two new ones, while San Francisco YIMBY reported that the earlier approach would have increased care suites from 86 to 109. The latest version instead bundles the expansion into one taller building and takes the overall residential count to 122.
Historic Features Would Get A New Public Role
City preservation documents describe the Julia Morgan Building as an architecturally significant example of Jacobethan Revival design and link it to the long history of the Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society. Rather than treating it as a development headache, the proposal would restore the structure and keep it as the visual anchor of the site.
The caretaker’s cottage, known as Stone Cottage, would be moved and turned into the Julia Morgan Historic Center, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The planned center would host educational programs, community events and fundraising, giving the campus a public-facing role beyond its residential and care operations.
State Housing Laws Could Speed The Path
The proposal is landing in the middle of a state-law shift that is reshaping how San Francisco builds housing. The Real Deal reports that the project leans on California housing laws that can let qualifying developments exceed local zoning, move faster through entitlements and lock in the rules in place when an application is filed.
That legal backdrop is especially relevant in the Marina, where the senior campus sits just one block south of a proposed 850-unit Safeway redevelopment. The two projects differ dramatically in size and purpose, but together they highlight how quickly a traditionally low-rise neighborhood is being asked to take on new levels of density.
For Heritage, the argument is that this is not some random apartment tower muscling into the neighborhood, but a way to keep a century-old senior-care mission physically and financially sustainable. For Marina residents, the question is whether the promise of preserving a beloved historic facade and campus character feels like a fair trade for an eight-story building rising behind it.
