Incoming District 8 Supervisor Gary McCoy says he still wants to turn one of the Castro’s two gas stations into housing after he is sworn in in January, he told SFGATE in a Thursday interview. Hoodline also reported the plan, citing that interview.
Why it matters: McCoy, who swept every precinct in the district, has not proposed a specific project or contacted either owner, SFGATE reported. He said the sites under discussion are the Chevron and the Castro Gas and Food Mart. “We’ve got two gas stations in the Castro. Do we need two gas stations in the Castro? Probably not,” he said at a Commonwealth Club debate last month.
Similar conversions have a long and difficult history. SFGATE said a 2022 feasibility study of the city’s “Cars to Casas” ordinance, approved under then-Mayor London Breed, found construction costs outweighed housing revenue in the scenarios studied, and that the Castro Chevron was flagged in 2024 for petroleum-contaminated soil. The Planning Department has logged more than 40 gas-station-to-housing projects since the late 1980s, most of them filed years ago. McCoy said he plans to inventory potential sites in the district and try to speed approvals. “My goal is to build affordable housing cheaper,” he told SFGATE. The outlet said neither station owner had responded by publication time.