A one-dollar administrative permit issued July 23 for 444 Kirkham Street in the Inner Sunset quietly references a prior development application linked to the Kirkham Project — a 445-unit proposal that was set for a 2018 groundbreaking and never moved.

On July 23, the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection issued permit 202607235469 for 444 Kirkham Street in the Inner Sunset. It cost one dollar. Its purpose: create four new official addresses — 1484, 1486, 1488, and 1490 9th Avenue — register sub-unit numbers for existing apartments at the corner, and retire 1482 9th Ave from the city's records. Existing use: apartments. Proposed use: apartments.

One line in the permit description earns a second look. Alongside the address housekeeping sits a reference to PA#202002194861 — a prior permit number that public-records research links to the Kirkham Project, a development proposal that has occupied this parcel, and a fair amount of neighborhood anxiety, since 2015.

The Kirkham Project, as developer Westlake Urban brought it to city planners, was not small. It called for the demolition of the 86-unit Kirkham Heights apartment complex and its replacement with a 445-unit development across six new buildings, according to SocketSite's coverage of the project's Environmental Impact Review. Naomi Porat, then listed as project representative for Westlake Urban, pledged in developer FAQs that the existing rent-controlled units would survive the transition: "Westlake will submit an application for a Development Agreement, a binding legal contract that will include the obligation to replace the existing 86 rent controlled units with 86 new rent-controlled units."

A summer 2018 groundbreaking was scheduled. No construction permit or occupancy record for the project appears in publicly available databases.

Opposition had organized in the interim. Neighbors under the banner of Mount Sutro Kirkham Heights Neighbors raised specific concerns about the project's earthwork: roughly 69,000 cubic yards of rock and soil to be removed from the hillside, a figure cited at community meetings by the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council. Denis Mosgofian, one of the group's primary voices, described the scope at the time: "They are going to reshape that entire mountainside… They want to gouge out the equivalent of a 52-foot high, football field worth of rock and soil out of that slope. It's a hazard zone." The Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco formally requested the city include a community alternative — 32 preserved rent-controlled units plus 154 new ones — in the EIR, according to the Richmond Sunset News. Critics also alleged that 34 rent-controlled units on the property were being intentionally vacated ahead of approval.

None of that resolved into a definitive public outcome before the project stalled.

The addressing permit filed last week authorizes no demolition, no construction, no physical change to the hillside. Whether it represents routine administrative upkeep or a step in a sequence the permit text doesn't spell out, the city's record on 444 Kirkham is unchanged where it counts: existing use, apartments; proposed use, apartments. In the Inner Sunset over the past 90 days, 15 eviction notices have been filed with the city; 401 service requests came in over the last seven days. The hillside above 9th Avenue looks the same as it did last week.