By J.K. Dineen, Ko Lyn Cheang, Staff Writers
Oct 9, 2025
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/rezoning-towers-miami-beach-21088955.php
Mayor Daniel Lurie and opponents to his proposed upzoning plan don’t have much in common, but there is one thing they seem to share these days: They each warn that if their side loses San Francisco could resemble Miami Beach.
With Lurie’s so-called “family zoning plan” in its homestretch — it is scheduled for a final vote at the Board of Supervisors in November — both sides made their final cases at packed town halls this week in the city’s Sunset and Pacific Heights neighborhoods. And both sides are using the glass-tower filled Florida city as a worst-case scenario boogeyman of what could happen if their side doesn’t prevail.
“I was born and raised in San Francisco. I think our neighborhoods are what make us so dynamic and unique,” Lurie said at a packed town hall Monday night in a hot and stuffy Sunset recreation hall. “I also do not want Ocean Beach turned into Miami Beach.”
The specter of San Francisco’s historic neighborhoods being overwhelmed by highrises comes as members of Board of Supervisors face increasing pressure from both advocates and opponents about whether to increase heights and density in large swaths of the city unaccustomed to housing development, from the Sunset and Richmond districts to the Marina and Northern Waterfront.
The changes would allow six- and eight-story buildings in the quiet flats where North Beach gives way to Fisherman’s Wharf — North Point, Bay, Jefferson and Beach streets — while automobile-choked Lombard Street, a motel-rich boulevard where Marin commuters motor to and from the Golden Gate Bridge at rush hour, could become home to 16-story buildings. Twenty-four story towers could pop up on Van Ness between Broadway and Sutter, while eight-story apartment complexes would be allowed along most of Judah, Noriega and Taraval streets, the Sunset’s busy streetcar routes.
Neighborhood groups have sought to generate opposition to the plan by issuing photoshopped images of low-slung neighborhoods like Noe Valley and the Sunset transformed by drab Soviet-style apartment blocks, including towers along Ocean Beach, although heights would be capped at 65 feet on transit corridors near the beach.
Lurie has pushed back by pointing out that if San Francisco fails to adopt a state-compliant plan to allow for 36,000 units, the state would essentially take hold of every aspect of new housing, giving builders free reign to build as tall and dense as they want wherever they want.
That alternative, known as the Builder’s Remedy, has led to blockbuster proposals in municipalities that don’t have state-approved housing plans. This has included dozens of massive projects far in excess of those cities’ zoning: 380 units on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, a 40-story tower in Menlo Park on the former site of Sunset Magazine, and 1,464 units by the Charles M. Schultz Airport in Sonoma County.