Van Ness Avenue near Eddy Street carries a 35 percent commercial vacancy rate and a new city ordinance inviting chain stores — while a $3.5 million permit at the corner's most blighted address goes to a storage facility, not the social infrastructure the block is missing.

The former Mini Cooper dealership at 799 Van Ness is visibly blighted — graffiti on the facade, windows broken — and a $3.5 million permit for additions and alterations, permit number 202606092873, was filed there on June 25, 2026. Storage Star is planning a 45,000-square-foot facility in that space.

A thread posted this month on r/AskSF put the question the block raises more directly than most city data does. A prospective renter considering a lease near Van Ness and Eddy asked whether the location was "too close to the Tenderloin and far from young people hotspots." For anyone actually trying to decide whether to sign a lease here, the permits, the vacancy figures, and the 311 logs give a more honest picture than any neighborhood summary.

On the commercial condition of Van Ness, the numbers are unambiguous. The avenue carries a 35 percent vacancy rate — roughly 250,000 square feet of empty space, according to Cameron Baird, senior vice president at Avison Young. Eight individual sites exceed 10,000 square feet each, former auto-dealership footprints too large for most independent operators. The Walgreens at 790 Van Ness closed in November 2020. The former CCSF building on Eddy Street, one block over, remains vacant and is cited as a persistent drag on the node. CVS at 701 Van Ness announced a closure in early 2026, then reversed course and will stay open.

The city's response is a policy adjustment. In May 2025, the Board of Supervisors passed Ordinance File 250101, removing the conditional-use requirement for formula retail along Van Ness — opening the corridor to chain stores previously restricted by planning code. Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, a co-sponsor, described Van Ness as "a highly trafficked city arterial that has been hampered by an outdated planning code." Supervisor Danny Sauter put it differently: "Along Van Ness, along a highway, a busy street, these are the spaces that formula retail should be in and we want to make it easier for them to open up."

One block east, the Tenderloin recorded 55 eviction notices in the last 90 days, with recent filings on the 1000 block of Post Street and the 600 and 700 blocks of Jones Street. The neighborhood generated 974 service requests through 311 in the last seven days. Drug activity that concentrated near the Van Ness and Eddy bus stop was measurably reduced following a 2023 federal raid, but conditions along Eddy Street have remained uneven since.

What someone walking the intersection tomorrow would find: large vacant storefronts on both sides of the avenue, a functional BRT stop — 86 percent of riders in a spring 2024 SFMTA survey reported shorter commutes, with direct access north to FiDi — and a sparse social landscape. The corridor's transit bones are real. The hospitality layer — the bar, the coffee shop, the restaurant that fills a Tuesday evening — is thin on this block right now.

The $3.5 million permit at 799 Van Ness goes to storage, not a café. Whoever fills the other 250,000 square feet — whenever they arrive — will decide what this corner actually becomes.