On Lombard Street at Richardson Avenue, where Route 101 traffic heads toward the Golden Gate Bridge, a two-story house built in 1932 is now the most visible test of San Francisco's new zoning in Cow Hollow. Plans that surfaced in July on SF YIMBY would replace 2629 Lombard with a 65-foot, six-story building of 15 units: two studios, seven one-bedrooms and six two-bedrooms, with no on-site parking.
The proposal uses Housing Choice San Francisco, the incentive program in the city's Family Zoning Plan, and three of its 15 units would be deed-restricted affordable homes. It is still a proposal. In the ten months since the rezoning took effect, that is roughly what the neighborhood's new building rules have produced: a few early filings, one plan for housing that turned into a plan for retail, and a much larger tower proposal a few blocks north that arrived under a state law. Building costs and the routes that state law offers are shaping Cow Hollow and the Marina more than the new height map is. A buyer studying a block near Lombard, Union or Chestnut learns more from the projects actually filed nearby than from the zoning map.
What the Map Changed in January
The Board of Supervisors adopted the Family Zoning Plan on December 9, 2025, and Mayor Daniel Lurie signed it on December 12, according to the SF Planning Department. It took effect on January 12, 2026. Planning describes the adopted framework in broad categories. Major transit and commercial streets get mid-rise buildings of six to eight stories, or high-rises of nine stories and up. Off-corridor residential areas lose their density limits, usually within the existing height limits. Certain corner and opportunity sites can go up to six stories.
The Cow Hollow Association, which opposes the upzoning, describes the proposal as six stories on Union and Chestnut, eight along Lombard, and 14 stories at Lombard's intersections with Divisadero and Fillmore. Those numbers come from an advocacy page, and they are not a parcel-level reading of the final rules. The binding source for any one lot is the city's adopted Local Program Height map, marked "Adopted December 2025."
A map sets a ceiling. Whether anyone builds up to it depends on a separate calculation.
Seven Proposals, Citywide
In August, the San Francisco Chronicle counted the response. As of its August 8, 2026 report, the rezoning had drawn seven proposed projects across the whole city, together adding fewer than 40 homes to the pipeline. One was a duplex in Cow Hollow. The others included an eight-story building at 230 Anza Street in the Richmond, two nine-unit buildings in Twin Peaks, a Noe Valley triplex and a lot merger on Upper Market.
The Chronicle contrasted that pace with earlier rezonings in Rincon Hill, Central SoMa, Market-Octavia and the Eastern Neighborhoods. In each of those, developers bought sites and positioned themselves to break ground as soon as the new rules arrived. The paper attributed today's slower response to rising construction costs and high interest rates, the same forces that have stalled market-rate building since the pandemic.
People closest to the projects describe the gap in practical terms. Witt Turner of the Housing Action Coalition told the Chronicle that property owners were "sitting down with architects and general contractors to see what works economically," and called the moment "a digestion period." Bora Ozturk of March Capital Fund said his firm was analyzing sites on Geary, California and Van Ness, and expected that "some of the projects will pencil." The same report noted that supervisors had cut the share of affordable units that market-rate developers must include from 20% to 5%, another input in those calculations. Earlier in the year, The Frisc quoted Mission Housing director Sam Moss on the same problem: zoning and faster approvals do not automatically bring financing, and lenders remain cautious about San Francisco.
Planning's chief of staff, Dan Sider, told the Chronicle the department was meeting with owners about other projects, some much larger than those filed. He named the kinds of sites he expected to draw interest: "closed gas stations or single-story vacant retail buildings." That description fits the Cow Hollow and Marina sites that have moved so far.
Three Lots Near the Corridor, Three Different Routes
The three most visible sites in or next to Cow Hollow show how each one ends up following a different rule.
| Site | What is proposed | Route | Last reported status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2629 Lombard St., Cow Hollow | Six stories, 65 feet, 15 units, three affordable | Housing Choice-SF, part of the Family Zoning Plan | Plans reported July 14, 2026; still a proposal |
| 2055 Chestnut St., Marina | Retail expansion keeping the Lombard-facing parking lot | Replaced an earlier entitlement for 49 apartments | Revised plan reported February 2026; no construction timeline |
| 15 Marina Blvd., Marina Safeway | 848 apartments in 22- and 18-story towers over a replacement Safeway | AB 2011 state streamlining | Final approval letter not yet issued as of mid-September; federal suit filed |
The Chestnut Street site is the clearest sign that permission alone does not decide the outcome. The block between Steiner and Fillmore already had approval for a 49-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail to replace a bank building and its surface parking. In February, SF YIMBY reported that the Prado Group, filing for owner The Bruni Company, had moved to a different plan. It would expand the existing structure into four narrow retail spaces, keep much of the sawtooth roofline, and leave the Lombard-facing lot in place, at an estimated construction cost of about $2.75 million. An approved housing project became a smaller, cheaper commercial one in the same year that the surrounding zoning grew more permissive.
The largest proposal near Cow Hollow did not come from the Family Zoning Plan. Align Real Estate first proposed redeveloping the Marina Safeway late in 2025, according to the Chronicle. The original plan used AB 2011 and SB 330, two state streamlining laws, and called for two towers with 790 apartments and a tallest point of 25 floors. According to the SF Public Press, revised plans submitted July 14, 2026 increased the count to 848 apartments, lowered the towers to 22 and 18 floors, and kept 86 affordable units. KQED reported that the existing store would close during construction, with a replacement Safeway planned as part of the project.
Where the Pressure Points Are Now
The Safeway site is also where the legal fight has concentrated. Planning found the project eligible for AB 2011 in August. As the Chronicle reported on September 14, that finding was not an automatic approval, and the final approval letter had not been issued at that point. On September 11, the YesAnd Foundation, Neighborhoods United San Francisco and four Marina residents filed a federal complaint against Align, the city and its Planning and Public Health departments, PG&E and Albertsons. The complaint challenges the streamlined eligibility and the handling of contamination from the PG&E steam plant that once stood on the site. The SF Standard reported on October 20 on a separate notice of intent under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, a hazardous-waste law that requires a waiting period before a suit under it can be filed. Align's David Balducci told the Chronicle the company was "confident this project fully complies with the law."
The two neighborhood associations do not take the same position. The Cow Hollow Association opposes the upzoning outright and promotes a 2026 local-control ballot measure on its site. The Marina Community Association's president told the SF Public Press that the group ended up supporting the Family Zoning Plan after working with Supervisor Stephen Sherrill on height limits, while strongly opposing the Safeway proposal. Sherrill, who has said he worked through the plan parcel by parcel, has asked for independent scrutiny of the Safeway site's AB 2011 eligibility.
Citywide, the plan itself faces challenges from two directions. A January suit by Neighborhoods United SF and Small Business Forward alleges inadequate environmental review, as KQED reported. A February 12 petition from YIMBY Law and allied groups argues the plan allows too little housing. Briefing in that case continued into September. No ruling in either case has changed the plan. One cost lever also remains unsettled. According to the Standard's October 13 report, the mayor's announced single-stair change was still draft Department of Building Inspection guidance for case-by-case requests on four- to six-story buildings. That is the building size of most small Lombard lots.
All of this points buyers toward the same thing. On Lombard, Union and Chestnut, change has followed sites where the current use is easy to replace: a vacant 1932 house, a bank building with a parking lot, a supermarket with a large surface lot. A block lined with occupied flats and well-used storefronts carries the same new height limit as its neighbors, but it has a much weaker case for redevelopment while construction costs and interest rates stay where the Chronicle described them. This is general information about public proposals and pending cases, not legal or financial advice. Anyone weighing a specific property should confirm its rules with the city and the right professionals.
A Few Questions Buyers Raise
Has construction started on any of these Cow Hollow or Marina projects? None of the reporting shows construction underway at 2629 Lombard, 2055 Chestnut or the Marina Safeway. The Chestnut retail plan had no timeline, and the Safeway project had no stated construction schedule as of July.
Where can I see the height limit for a specific Cow Hollow address? SF Planning publishes the adopted Local Program Height map along with the base height map on its Family Zoning Plan page. Those maps, not renderings or advocacy summaries, govern each parcel.
Is the Marina Safeway project part of the Family Zoning Plan? No. It was proposed late in 2025 under the state's AB 2011 and SB 330 streamlining laws, a separate route from the city's rezoning.
If you are weighing a home within a few blocks of Lombard, Union or Chestnut and want to know which nearby sites have filings or are realistic candidates for redevelopment, Lauren Fraser can go through that block with you before you write an offer. Let's Connect.
