Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown joined city Supervisor Sophie Maxwell and local business and nonprofit officials in the city’s Bayview District today to celebrate the development of the Carroll Station area of the neighborhood.
The celebration was held at a new condominium complex built at 5800 Third St., where people will begin moving in starting next month.
The condos will be joined by a Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in 2011, and the neighborhood will later include other restaurants and senior housing. Maxwell said the Fresh & Easy will be the first major grocery store to be built in the Bayview in more than 50 years.
Brown said the development of the area, which surrounds the Carroll Station stop on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Muni Metro T-Third Street line, is due to “the quality of leadership…in the community.”
When Brown took over as mayor in 1996, he said he “was handed an agenda of unfinished things, and it looked more like a phonebook.”
Many of the items on the list, like light rail service on Third Street and the nearby Martin Luther King Jr. swimming pool, have come to fruition.
Brown said the new condos were the latest step in revitalizing the Bayview and are unique in a city of unique buildings.
“I’ve gone to a lot of buildings around San Francisco, and had not seen a dog shower before today,” Brown said. “That’s just one of the amenities here.”
Maxwell said the effort to get the area developed “has been a labor of love, and this is our baby.”
Cathy Davis, program director of the Bayview Hunters Point Multipurpose Senior Services Center, which is building a new Aging Campus nearby, said, “What’s so great about this project is it’s not just a bunch of buildings, but a community.”
The Fresh & Easy store, expected to open in early 2011, will serve as a central hub of the neighborhood and also create about 20 local jobs for store employees, said Roberto Munoz, the company’s neighborhood affairs director.
The condos at 5800 Third St., built by Holliday Development, are currently on sale.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
