Five years after a car wash was cleared to be turned into housing, locals are enraged that the site in one of the city’s best residential locations remains empty.

The Touchless Car Wash at 400 Divisadero St. has been slated for redevelopment into housing since 2017. Plans were approved in 2019. But nothing was built, then Texas-based developer Genesis Real Estate Group dropped out. The firm won’t say why. 

This cleared the way for another developer, San Francisco-based 4Terra Investments, which in June filed plans for an even bigger housing project, with 203 units versus the initial 184. It has yet to break ground.

The site is centrally located near commercial corridors on Divisadero Street and in the Lower Haight. Blocks from Golden Gate Park and Duboce Triangle, the neighborhood is peppered with architectural delights in Victorian and Edwardian styles, with the Painted Ladies just a stone’s throw away. 

Jacob Rosas lives across the street from the former car wash. The 28-year-old called it “quite the eyesore.”

“We have all this vacant space in San Francisco,” Rosas said, pointing out that the corner is a high-traffic area and feels like a waste of space. “Affordable housing is so hard to find, and yet we’ve got this.”

Hanging out at Madrone Art Bar, Cow Hollow resident Vikram Gupta slammed the empty lot as “tragic” in a city like San Francisco, where space is so coveted.

“Five years, and we’re still talking about housing,” said Gupta, 50. “It’s absurd that we have all these empty lots. Even when something gets approved, it takes, like, three to five years to start building.”

In 2015, owners Roy and Patricia Shimek announced that they would sell the property. The car wash opened in 1987 and closed at some point after 2015 but reopened briefly in 2021. 

The only hint as to why the Genesis project didn’t move forward is from an April 2023 planning application letter that said the smaller housing plans were no longer financially viable due to higher construction costs and lower San Francisco rents. 

“Since the project was approved, many factors have made the project financially impractical to-date,” the letter said. “Nevertheless, the property owner is committed to finding a developer to move forward with the much needed project.”

Genesis Real Estate Group and 4Terra Investments, their attorneys and other companies listed on both developers’ plans either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment, including questions about why the car wash remained undeveloped for years and when groundbreaking and completion of the new housing project might take place. 

The Shimeks did not respond to requests for comment. The Standard last heard from Patricia in a series of emails between November 2022 and January 2023, when she said they were working with an undisclosed nonprofit buyer to sell the property; the deal later fell through, according to her.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported in January 2023 that the nonprofit buyer was the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, which sought to build a 100% affordable housing project on the site. Supervisor Dean Preston said at the time that the plans collapsed because the corporation couldn’t secure city funds for the purchase.

Today, Preston blames Mayor London Breed for the deal falling through. 

“We would already have affordable housing there had the mayor not reneged on her commitment and blocked the fully funded acquisition of the site for affordable housing in 2022,” Preston said in a recent emailed statement. “But at this point, I’m glad there’s an interested developer for this vacant lot, and I look forward to learning more about their plans.”

In response to Preston’s statement, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, which is responsible for providing money for affordable housing development, confirmed that it did not move to acquire the former car wash but did acquire five other sites, including 650 Divisadero St., which is blocks away.

“We’re looking forward to seeing housing built at 400 Divisadero under its current ownership,” the office said in a statement.

But not everyone in the neighborhood is frustrated with the lack of housing. Xin Lee, 53, who works at Bodhi Meditation, said the former car wash should be turned into a parking lot. 

“We’ve lost a lot of customers,” Lee said. “A lot of them have said there’s no parking.”