Parkmerced, San Francisco

Parkmerced is the second-largest single-owner neighborhood of apartment blocks west of the Mississippi River after Park La Brea in Los Angeles.

[1] The complex is located south of SFSU, west of 19th Avenue, and east of Lake Merced and the Harding Park Golf Club.

Metropolitan Life has built similar apartment blocks in other large cities, including Park La Brea in Los Angeles, Parkfairfax in Virginia, and Riverton Houses, Parkchester, and Stuyvesant Town—Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan to name a few.

Current projects include replacing old elevators, remodeling entrances to the towers, applying wooden window frames and miscellaneous detailing to the garden townhomes, modifying landscaping, providing new mailbox units, as well as painting the outsides of all the buildings through 2009.

Parkmerced acquired their own Saturday morning Farmer's Market, which takes place on the western meadow of the neighborhood.

In 2010, the owners and managers of the various parts of Parkmerced proposed a major redevelopment, which would involve phased demolition of the deteriorating garden apartments in favor of higher density replacements, and reconfiguring some streets.

In May 2011, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 6-5 to approve this redevelopment plan,[2] including the replacement of virtually all of the low-rise garden apartment units with new mid-rise structures.

In addition, the plan calls for preserving the rent-controlled status of tenants who are relocated, and involves construction of several hundred new units, some of which will be rentals, while others will be made available for sale.