Align Real Estate filed a formal planning application this week to redevelop the Bernal Heights Safeway at 3350 Mission Street into a 90-foot, 379-unit mixed-use building — invoking SB 330 and the State Density Bonus to streamline approval. The store stays; the surface lot footprint becomes housing.

Formal plans arrived at San Francisco's planning department this week for the redevelopment of the Bernal Heights Safeway at 3350 Mission Street — a 2.15-acre lot wedged between Mission and San Jose Avenue, with a narrow corridor reaching back toward 29th Street. The project had been telegraphed in preliminary renderings since last November; as of June 11 it is a filed application.

Align Real Estate submitted the plans on behalf of the property owner, Albertsons Companies. The design, by Perry Architects with C2 Collaborative on landscape, calls for a roughly 90-foot building totaling about 479,000 square feet: 274,200 square feet of residential across 379 units, a 55,000-square-foot footprint for a replacement ground-level Safeway, and a 291-car garage accounting for another 149,600 square feet. Parking for 286 bicycles is included.

The unit mix runs 65 studios, 185 one-bedrooms, 89 two-bedrooms, and 40 three-bedrooms. Of the total, 76 units are deed-restricted affordable — a threshold that lets the application invoke the State Density Bonus law and Senate Bill 330, both tools to streamline approval and push residential capacity beyond baseline zoning. Construction cost is estimated at roughly $170 million, a figure the developer notes does not include all development expenses. No groundbreaking timeline has been set.

The podium-style design features three separate courtyard spaces on the podium roof and a rooftop balcony overlooking Mission Street. Updated renderings show wider windows, a double-height transparent entrance for the grocery store, and a dark metal wrap establishing the ground floor. White and wood-look solid phenolic resin panels cover the exterior.

The Bernal Heights application is part of a six-project Bay Area portfolio assembled by Align Real Estate and Albertsons, targeting more than 4,000 apartments across the region. Five of the six would preserve a replacement grocery on-site; the sixth — an Oakland location where Albertsons owns the building but Trader Joe's operates the store — would not rebuild a market.

Bernal Heights had 8 eviction notices filed in the last 90 days, per DataSF, including one from the 3500 block of Mission Street in late May — the block immediately adjacent to the project site. The neighborhood logged 455 requests to 311 in the past week.

Future residents would be a two-minute walk from the J Church Muni stop and an eight-minute bus ride from the 24th Street BART station, according to the application.

For now, 3350 Mission reads the way it has for years from the sidewalk: surface parking in front, a supermarket behind. The formal application is in. The clock on city review starts now.