Safeway is building housing complexes; 2,700 units planned for S.F.

[Auggie]

San Francisco Chronicle / 11-21-25

From the Fillmore to the Richmond to Bernal Heights, Safeway is now saying it will temporarily close multiple grocery stores to build housing complexes, a 180 degree turnaround from its decades-long position that urban grocery stores needed acres of yellow-stripped parking spaces to lure grocery-bag wielding customers to its aisles of frozen pizzas and sodas.

For San Francisco developers and housing advocates, who for years have been working to convince the grocer to redevelop some of its real estate portfolio, it is an unexpected and welcomed twist. Afterall, in addition to feeding families across the city with meats and vegetables, they argued Safeway has long been squatting on a cornucopia of surface parking lots that could go a long way toward feeding the city’s hunger for new homes.

SNIP

(With) a California political landscape that is aggressively deregulating the housing construction industry, giving developers ever-increasing incentives to build bigger and faster and denser, Safeway has embraced the pro-housing mandates requiring cities across the state to zone for more density.

In the last two weeks Align Real Estate has announced a trio of deals that would add 2,696 units to Safeway-owned properties: 370 units at 3350 Mission Street, at the foot of Bernal Heights; 526 units at 850 La Playa in the Richmond District; and 1,800 in the Fillmore, at the site of a Safeway that shuttered earlier this year.

More (paywall): https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/safeway-housing-san-francisco-21198930.php

Sitting underneath these new dwellings will, in most cases, be an updated Safeway store.

Built-in customer base.

No indication in the link as to who will own what. Does Safeway manage the complex? Lease the property to the developer? Sell outright? Will there be monthly specials on rent?