The century-old Verdi Building, gutted by fires in 2013 and 2018, would be demolished for an eight-story, 89-unit apartment building — with the developer invoking state streamlining laws SB 330 and SB 423 to clear local zoning and preservation hurdles. Partial demolition permits were filed in April.

On the North Beach corner across from Washington Square, the Verdi Building has been a boarded-up ruin longer than some of the people who walk past it have lived there. The century-old brick landmark at 659 Union St. burned twice — once in 2013, again in 2018 — and has sat as a burned-out shell ever since. Now there is a plan to make most of it disappear.

Developer Jeff Jurow and his partners at Red Bridge Partners, who bought the property in 2017 for just over $2 million, have submitted a preliminary application to build an eight-story, 89-unit apartment building on the site, according to The San Francisco Standard. The proposal includes 5,700 square feet of ground-floor retail and a rooftop restaurant; 15 of the units would be affordable, at 50 to 120 percent of area median income. It nearly quadruples an earlier, 23-unit plan. And the project is already moving on the ground: as of April 1, emergency demolition permits had been filed to remove a 50-foot section of brick wall at the rear of the structure, San Francisco YIMBY reported.

The mechanism is the story. Per the Standard, the developer is leaning on two state laws to get past City Hall: SB 330, the 2019 Housing Crisis Act, which freezes the zoning in place when an application is filed, and SB 423, which allows streamlined, near-automatic approval for qualifying housing. Local preservationists, the Standard reports, have pushed to designate the area a historic district — which would let the city restrict the building's height and design. Preserving the original facade, the paper reports, would add roughly $20 million and a year to the job.

Underneath the legal fight is a ledger the state laws don't resolve: the 2013 fire displaced 32 rent-controlled tenants, some of whom, the Standard reports, still want to come back. Anyone walking past today sees what they've seen for years — brick, plywood, and a corner waiting on a decision.