The state housing statute that fast-tracked a proposed 25-story tower at the Marina Safeway site may have contained its own undoing: a requirement that the project's neighbors be "urban uses" — and about half of them are parks.

District 2 Supervisor Stephen Sherrill is arguing in a new letter to city officials that the Marina Safeway development at 15 Marina Blvd. is ineligible for streamlining and CEQA exemption under Assembly Bill 2011 — because Fort Mason, Marina Green, and the San Francisco Yacht Harbor collectively make up roughly 50% of the project's adjacent parcels, falling short of the law's 75% "urban uses" threshold. The challenge is the latest wrinkle in a months-long political fight over whether Sacramento's housing mandates can actually reach SF's park-ringed, low-slung neighborhoods.

AB2011, the Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act of 2022, was designed to cut through exactly the kind of local resistance that greeted Align Real Estate's proposal when it first surfaced last December. The law allows developers to bypass the California Environmental Quality Act and win ministerial — rather than discretionary — approval, eliminating the public hearings and political horse-trading that have stalled housing production across the state for decades.

But embedded in the statute is a site-eligibility requirement: 75% of a project's adjacent parcels must be developed with "urban uses." For most parcels in San Francisco's densely built neighborhoods, that's a formality. At 15 Marina Blvd., it's a legal problem.

The Safeway site abuts Fort Mason — part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, federal land managed by the National Park Service — along with Marina Green and the Yacht Harbor, both under the jurisdiction of San Francisco's Recreation and Parks Department. Sherrill, in a letter co-signed by the Marina Community Association and Neighborhoods United SF, argues that none of these qualify as urban uses under the law, and that the development site's park-heavy surroundings disqualify it from the streamlining benefits that Align has claimed.

"One could characterize it as a loophole," Sherrill told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I don't think it's a loophole at all. It's just what the law says."

Sherrill says he spent months consulting land use attorneys, planning experts, and officials at the California Department of Housing and Community Development before concluding the argument is legally sound. After meeting with Mayor Daniel Lurie on Thursday to present the findings, a mayoral spokesperson said the administration is "reviewing what Supervisor Sherrill has shared" — a notably cautious posture from a mayor who had already called the original project a "complete violation of the spirit" of the city's Family Zoning plan when it was first proposed.

Align Real Estate, which pitched the 790-unit project as part of a wave of Safeway redevelopment applications across the city last year, declined to comment on Sherrill's letter.

The legal counterargument is equally stark: San Francisco is the densest city on the West Coast, and declaring any corner of it insufficiently "urban" for a housing law borders on absurdity. Proponents of the project have pointed to parking lots ringing the site as evidence of urban character. The site is surrounded by something, the argument goes — just not anything built tall.

Project opponent Erin Roach sides firmly with Sherrill. "It feels like the analysis is solid," she told the Chronicle. "It's surrounded by parks and you have to look at the entire parcel, not just the parking lots."

The stakes extend well beyond this one tower. San Francisco contains roughly 3,000 acres of national parkland and city recreation land. If courts or the state Housing and Community Development department agreed that such green space disqualifies adjacent sites from AB2011 streamlining, it could complicate any housing development that borders the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, or the city's network of rec department properties — a significant share of the real estate frontier that rezoning has newly opened up.

Even if Sherrill's challenge succeeds, Align isn't empty-handed. Other state statutes — density bonus law, the Builder's Remedy, various ministerial review frameworks — remain available to the developer, though without AB2011's specific CEQA exemption and wage requirements.

The fight over the Marina Safeway has become a proxy war over whether the city's housing transformation can reach its most resistant zip codes. San Francisco is under state mandate to permit 82,000 new homes by 2031. How regulators and courts ultimately define "urban" in a city surrounded by parkland may have a lot to say about whether that number is even approachable.