A Mission parking lot finally gets its permit for 168 homes

The parking lot at 321 Florida Street has outlasted a planning approval, an interest-rate shock, a set of expired community deals and six Novembers. On Nov. 6 it ran out of reasons to stay a parking lot. San Francisco's building department issued the permit for a nine-story building with 168 homes over ground-floor retail, six years and nine days after the developer filed for it.

The lot sits on Florida Street between 17th and Mariposa, about a block from Franklin Square, where the Inner Mission runs into Potrero Hill. According to Houseberry data for the Inner Mission, the typical home there was worth about $1.19 million in October 2026, up from $1.12 million a year earlier.

This is a story about what it now takes to get a market-rate building out of the ground in San Francisco, and what the neighborhood gave up along the way.

Five years of a permitted parking lot

The Planning Commission approved the building in 2021 at 168 homes. Then rates climbed in 2022 and the numbers stopped working, which is the reason the developer gives for the wait. The agreements it had signed with Mission groups expired in 2023.

What came back is a thinner deal. Mission Local reported on Oct. 22 that the current plan has 152 homes and 15 below-market units, just under 10 percent. The 2021 version had 23, about 14 percent.

The below-market homes are priced for households earning 30 to 120 percent of the area median. For one person, that runs from $34,050 to $136,150 a year.

One loose end. The permit the city issued on Nov. 6 still describes 168 homes. If the building really shrinks to 152, a revision to that permit should follow, and we will look for it.

Developer CEO Mark MacDonald called getting the project financed "no small feat." He is right about that. A $61.7 million loan for a market-rate rental building in the Mission is rare in 2026.

A building with 15 below-market homes beats a parking lot with none.

The neighborhood groups that signed the 2021 agreements got less than they were promised, and they are entitled to say so loudly. The 1,500-square-foot arts gallery and the $2 million for the Folsom Street lot are not in the developer's current statement. Those were real promises. But the alternative to this version was never the 2021 version. It was more years of asphalt on Florida Street, and the Mission has had enough of those.

The developer says it is still working on the playground at Sweet Peas, the preschool next door, and plans to renew its agreement with the Friends of Franklin Square. Hold it to both.

The blocks around Florida Street

The Inner Mission is one of the city's cheaper places to buy, by a wide margin. Houseberry's October 2026 figure for the neighborhood, about $1.19 million, is roughly $1 million under the citywide typical home of about $2.2 million. Uphill, Houseberry data for Potrero Hill shows the typical home at about $1.55 million in October, up from $1.33 million a year earlier, a 16.5 percent jump that is nearly three times the Inner Mission's 6 percent.

Houseberry scores the Inner Mission 3.3 out of 5 for amenities and 2.0 for safety, and the neighborhood ranks 89th of the 92 we score in San Francisco overall. A new building does not move those scores on its own. What it does add is about 150 households within walking distance of the 16th Street shops and the Franklin Square fields, plus street retail on a block that has had none.

Expect two years of construction noise and trucks on Florida and 17th. The preschool sits right next to the site.

Eight big permits in one year

San Francisco issued new-building permits for eight projects of 100 or more homes between Jan. 1 and Nov. 10, 2026, by our read of the building department's permit records. Together they hold about 1,300 homes.

That is a modest number for a city whose state housing target runs to about 82,000 homes by 2031. Only one of the eight is in the Mission.

The fence should go up this month if the developer keeps its date. Before the crane arrives, see where the Inner Mission and its neighbors land on Houseberry's San Francisco neighborhood ranking.

Sources

• San Francisco Department of Building Inspection, permit 202010287628, issued Nov. 6, 2026
• Mission Local, 321 Florida housing project, Oct. 22, 2026
• Mission Local, the 2021 approval
• San Francisco building permit dataset, queried Nov. 11, 2026