{"id":34573,"date":"2024-06-27T13:51:34","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T20:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=34573"},"modified":"2024-06-27T13:51:35","modified_gmt":"2024-06-27T20:51:35","slug":"historic-building-weathers-grocery-owner-former-facebook-exec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/06\/27\/historic-building-weathers-grocery-owner-former-facebook-exec\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic building weathers grocery owner, former Facebook exec"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"\" by\u00a0ELIZABETH CREELY<\/a><\/strong> APRIL 12, 2017 (MissionLocal.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
The building at 18th and Mission Street. Photo by Elizabeth Creely<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After years of disrepair and neglect, a historic building at 18th and Mission streets is in the process of trading ownership from a former Facebook executive to a commercial developer. Once a hub of the Mission\u2019s Miracle Mile, the building may now become a dialysis center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike Conn, senior vice president of Meridian Property Company, a commercial developer based in San Ramon, confirmed his company is in negotiations to purchase the property, which has been empty for more than ten years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are in escrow to purchase the property,\u201d Conn wrote in an email, referring to the step before a final closing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Constructed in 1911, the building at 2205 Mission Street housed appliance and furniture stores during the heyday of the commercial district known as the Mission Mile that bustled along Mission Street in the 1950s. A dialysis clinic now has plans to move in.  This is the story of how two  earlier owners failed to accomplish the plans they envisioned for 2205 Mission St.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for Mission Local’s free daily newsletter<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conn, who has met with the Department of Building Inspection and the Historic Preservation staff at San Francisco Department of Planning, has no illusions about the process ahead. He gave no date for work to begin on the building, stressing that Meridian has \u201ca long approval process with the City, the community, and our Tenant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A medical clinic will be the third proposed use for this building. Two previous uses \u2013 an organic grocery store and a vegan restaurant and brewery \u2013 were proposed by the building\u2019s last two owners \u2013 first the grocery store owner Guadalupe Hernandez, and later an LLC involving Owen Van Natta, a former chief operating officer of Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after seven years of troubled property management and intermittent construction, the damaged building remains empty as complaints and violations pile up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening over there. But it doesn\u2019t look good,\u201d said Howard Ngo, whose grocery store Duc Loi sits directly across the street from the building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ngo purchased his property in 1991. It was a mess: needles, trash and feces were everywhere, Ngo said. He and his wife Amanda cleaned it up and opened a produce market, later adding a 28-unit apartment building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ngo said that the owner of the property at 2205 came in to seek his support a few years back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI asked him if he\u2019d done this kind of thing before and he said no,\u201d said Ngo. \u201cHe was a tall guy. Nice. But I haven\u2019t seen him since. I tried to get in touch with him, to ask what was happening, but got no response.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van Natta owns multiple properties in the Mission District, including 2205 Mission Street, which is managed by Tom Van Loben Sels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sels is a founding partner of Apercen Partners LLC, a tax-consulting and wealth management firm in Palo Alto. Requests for an interview sent to 2205 Mission Street LLC went unanswered as did attempts to reach Van Natta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mismanagement of the historic building, however, started before Van Natta purchased it. In 2010, Hernandez, who owns other grocery stores, purchased the building, formerly the 99-cent Depot store, and filed a permit to open an organic grocery store. In the application he described the building as having a stucco exterior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Department of Building Inspection staff called that description \u201cmisleading,\u201d according to a Department of Inspections document.  It obscured the existence of historic tiles, which had been put on in 1937. The tiles had been painted over by the building\u2019s previous owners in the years before the building achieved historic status.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2010 application to put the neighborhood<\/a> on the National Historic Registry, the city writes: \u201cAmong the most impressive examples of Modernist architecture were the Streamline Moderne remodel of the older commercial building at 2205 Mission Street with iron enamel panels, rounded corners, and a marquee\/tower sign.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That same year, neighboring merchants filed a complaint with the building inspection department, which found that the building was listed on the city\u2019s roster of historic buildings and issued a violation notice to Hernandez, stopping all work on the building and ordering that he restore the original exterior. This restoration never happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February of 2014, Hernandez sold the building to Van Natta for $5 million and the building\u2019s permits changed to reflect the vision of the new owner. The plan was to make it  the permanent home to Citizen Fox, a \u201cfull service brewery and restaurant.\u201d  In a 2016 piece by Lauren Smiley on Mission Street, Van Natta\u2019s broker \u2013 and later property manager \u2013 Bennett Mason described Van Natta\u2019s vision for his Mission properties<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHis idea is a cool thing, contributing to the community and doing something that would make his two daughters proud,\u201d Mason said at the time. But the building\u2019s troubles continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between December 2014 to March of this year, four complaints, and three notices of violation were filed against 2205 Mission Street LLC. The complaints came both from Mission Street merchants and the Board of Supervisors. Workers were doing work \u201cin a dangerous manner\u201d that went \u201cbeyond the scope of permit,\u201d the complaints alleged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the first complaint in December, 2014, workers erected unsafe scaffolding, removed paint from the metal trim on the building, and were dropping \u201cside panels\u201d in an unsafe manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building Inspector John Barnes visited the site three times between December 18th and December 29th, halting work on his final visit, and issuing a notice of violation. Barnes issued a second notice in February, 2015. Matters appeared to come to a head in June when Mason appeared at a hearing to explain the lack of progress on the building and lack of compliance with the first notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recording of the hearing, Mason can be heard blaming the planning staff, alleging that \u201cno one at Planning\u201d \u2013 presumably the historic preservation staff that he\u2019d been working with for nine months \u2013 wanted to sign off on further work. \u201cIt\u2019s a quasi-historic building,\u201d he says in a tone of voice clearly indicating sarcasm \u201cas are all buildings in San Francisco. We have to restore it to the way it was in built in the thirties,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Material to restore the exterior was being shipped from Tennessee, he said. In the meantime, he\u2019d directed a worker to remove paint from the metal trim that wrapped around the building. \u201cI didn\u2019t think a permit was required,\u201d Mason said at the hearing, arguing that the historic preservation staff had told him to remove the paint.    When Inspector Barnes visited the site and stopped the work, he says at the hearing, \u201cThe painter got in a fight with the inspector. And that\u2019s why we got a notice of violation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mason was given 30 days to remedy the violations. Within two months, more complaints were made, one by the Board of Supervisors, and another by an anonymous person who complained about pieces of glass hanging precariously from the second floor and an unsecured entrance on 18th street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most recent complaint was made last month by city planner Dario Jones, who described the building as an \u201cabandoned and derelict structure.\u201d He noted in his complaint that SF Planning had issued a permit to restore \u201cunauthorized fa\u00e7ade work\u201d back in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cToday, the property remains out of compliance,\u201d Jones wrote in the same complaint. <\/strong> Since then, a third notice of violation has been sent to 2205 Mission Street LLC. At least one more was issued this month for broken windows hanging over the right of way, according to Inspector John Romaidis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February in 2016, Citizen Fox announced it would not be opening at 18th and Mission as planned, after briefly operating in a smaller location at the other end of the block. Deborah Blum, founder of Citizen Fox and co-owner of several restaurants in San Francisco, noted the glut of restaurants in the Mission \u2013 \u201cThe restaurant environment in San Francisco is a bit saturated.  Expenses are incredibly high and there is such strong competition,\u201d Blum wrote in an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blum also cited dissatisfaction with San Francisco\u2019s Planning Department, stating that she thought the time to secure new permits was \u201cextraordinarily long.\u201d She added that her \u201cboss\u201d \u2013 presumably Van Natta owned thebuilding\u2013 had decided to sell it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building inspection records show that two building permits that were never paid for, including one permit in May of 2015 that was filed to comply with the violation notices. According to Joe Duffy, senior building inspector, paying for the permits is the final step in the application process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou start on the first floor, work your way up and leave through check out,\u201d Duffy told me in his office, \u201ccheck out\u201d being the Central Permit Bureau. The department sees applications for at least 66,000 permits each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accordingly, the Department of Building inspections must operate, at first, on trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have believe that people are going to do the right thing,\u201d Duffy said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s unclear why the property has fallen behind on compliance. Money is likely not the issue \u2013 Van Natta, a current director at Boku mobile payments, was included in Fortune\u2019s 2011 \u201cHighest Paid Men\u201d list<\/a>.  The 2205 LLC has paid$2,052.96 in fines, according to city records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One owner who has property nearby and asked for anonymity says Van Natta approached him last year with a request that he sell his property, said the fines weren\u2019t enough to provoke action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI told him I didn\u2019t want to sell my property. And I don\u2019t really know why he wanted it,\u201d the business owner said. \u201cWhat is he doing with his own building? It\u2019s just sitting there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He cited Van Natta\u2019s wealth as a reason for inaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA couple of thousand of dollars in fines isn\u2019t going mean anything to that guy. He can just pay the fines and let his building sit there. The rest of us can\u2019t afford to ignore the city,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both this man and Ngo expressed the same sentiments about working with the city: It\u2019s not that hard. Ngo, who arrived in America in the mid-seventies as a refugee from the war in Vietnam \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m a boat person,\u201d he told me proudly \u2013 worked with the Planning Department when he bought his property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI took a lot of risks. But the people in the planning department were very helpful, very nice. I would like to tell the owner of that property that he should work with the planning department. The neighborhood would look better,\u201d Ngo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other property owner agreed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you get into the business of buying properties on Mission street, you know what you\u2019re getting into. It\u2019s like driving in traffic: You know there\u2019s traffic lights. It\u2019s the same thing with historic buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wish this man the best. But I hope he can find a solution,\u201d Ngo told me, adding that he wondered if the owner didn\u2019t have enough money. \u201cMy customers have asked me about the building. I don\u2019t have anything to tell them. I don\u2019t know why he lets it sit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Left, an interior shot. Right, the clock. Photo by Elizabeth Creely<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
A broken widow. Photo by Elizabeth Creely<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Owen Van Natta\u2019s tech hub on Mission St. Photo by Elizabeth Creely<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Source: https:\/\/missionlocal.org\/2017\/04\/historic-building-weathers-grocery-store-owner-and-former-facebook-ceo\/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Mission+Local&utm_campaign=9a4d42a840-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_06_25_06_16&utm_term=0_-9a4d42a840-[LIST_EMAIL_ID]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0ELIZABETH CREELY APRIL 12, 2017 (MissionLocal.org) After years of disrepair and neglect, a historic building at 18th and Mission streets is in the process of trading ownership from a former Facebook executive to a commercial developer. Once a hub of the Mission\u2019s Miracle Mile, the building may now become a dialysis center. Mike… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34574,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34573\/revisions\/34574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}