Brady Block

This neighborhood plan spans a full block between 12th and Brady Streets in San Francisco’s Market Street/Van Ness Avenue redevelopment area. The Brady Block development aims to contribute to this revitalization by re-knitting the site into its surrounding context, creating active street edges, providing extensive and diverse housing options, and vastly improving the quality of the public realm.

The intricate plan features six buildings including a total of 579 new market-rate and affordable residences, as well as modern replacement for the aging Local 38 Plumbers’ Union Hall.  David Baker Architects and CMG Landscape Architecture are designing a robust new public realm for the site, once occupied primarily by parking lots.

Jazzie Collins Apartments, permanent supportive housing designed by DBA, was completed in 2022 and now offers 96 furnished, supportive homes for individuals coming out of homelessness. The other buildings ringing an upcoming central park include three market-rate developments, the new Plumbers’ Hall, and the renovation of the historic Civic Center Hotel.

As a setting for the new and restored buildings, the plan reimagines the surrounding street and alley network, creates a new public park, and adds a mid-block passageway connecting Market Street to the new park—Joseph P. Mazzola Gardens. Buildings along Market—including 1 Brady Street, designed by Kennerly Architecture and Planning—include extensive active commercial and community ground-floor uses. Ground floor patios and stoops will activate Brady Street, the mid-block mews, and Mazzola Gardens. A new retail space with outdoor seating will front Brady Street at the corner of Mazzola Gardens, and Stevenson Street will be lined with new retail and resident community spaces.

The site presents several challenges that have been addressed with the master plan and architectural designs, including the presence of two historic resources, a BART tunnel that runs beneath a corner of the site, and complex phasing.