The Schlage Lock Site

Turning a factory into a town center

One of the largest single sites in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood is the empty Schlage Lock plant, at the intersection of Bayshore and Leland Avenue.

Vacant for a number of years, this site is now ripe for redevelopment. The planning and development of the Schlage site is the VVPA's overriding issue. The Valley has long been without a neighborhood core - something other San Francisco communities have taken for granted for decades - and the direction taken at the Schlage property will determine our own community's character more surely than anything that has been built here in a generation.

The Schlage site, which was zoned industrial when it was built in the 1920s, now divides the two residential communities of Visitacion Valley and Little Hollywood, and sits close to what will soon be a major transit hub, where the Third Street Light Rail (an extension of the Muni J Line) will meet the Caltrain Bayshore/Brisbane Station.

In the spring of 2002, the city planning department hosted a series of discussions and planning sessions in the Valley to determine the general direction development on the site will take. All interested parties were invited to attend and did. Those meetings identified six major priorities in the future development of the Schlage site:

1. Health, and toxicity clean-up
2. Community facilities
3. Retail/grocery store
4. Affordable housing, where appropriate
5. Open space and common areas for the community
6. Revitalizing Leland Avenue

Below are three links related to the Schlage site.

• City Planning Department—Visitacion Valley page
• Urban Ecology, Neighborhood Center Plan (PDF)
• SPUR, Transit Village Alternative (PDF 5/2000)

The last two are both in the form of PDF documents. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view them. (Your computer probably already has this software installed, but if you have trouble, click on the link above to be taken to the site where you can download it for free.)