Mint Plaza Sleeping Pod Developer Buys Mostly Vacant Live-work Building On Mid-market

A Mid-Market building full of affordable studio units that was the subject of a protracted eviction fight in the last decade is now slated to become home to 400 sleeping pods, if a developer gets his way.

You may recall the saga of 1049 Market Street, a six-story former office building between Sixth and Seventh streets where a new owner attempted to evict 100 or so artists and students who lived there in 2013. The building is one of three on that block that were converted by the same developer in the late 1990s into "live-work" spaces that functioned as SRO-style dwelling units, many with loft beds and kitchenettes, and shared bathrooms.

Around 30 or so of the building's 84 units on the front and back of the building were perfectly legal, studio-type units with windows, however each floor contained dozens of interior units without windows or proper ventilation which rented for less than $900 per month. (Full disclosure: This writer lived there for a time before the eviction actions were taking place.)

The owner who bought the building in 2012, former basketball player John Gall, was seeking to convert 1049 Market back into office space — at a time when the Twitter Building was making big news, and mid-Market office space was suddenly in high demand. And, Gall argued, the eviction was necessary because of the illegality of many of those units. But the tenants put up a fight over their eviction, and the city stymied the process, calling the initial eviction improper.

By the time Gall attempted an Ellis Act eviction in 2016, only a couple dozen tenants remained in the building — some had left on their own and others had reportedly accepted small buyout payments.

That eviction process was also unsuccessful, and while the Chronicle reports that the building has been vacant for years, we have reason to believe that a few tenants have remained in the building all these years later. A settlement with the city in 2019 finally gave Gall the ability to convert most of the building back into offices, preserving 15 residential units, but the pandemic and subsequent crash of the office market likely stalled those plans.

Now, per the Chronicle, developer James Stallworth is stepping in. Stallworth has been up against city bureaucracy himself with regard to a building at 12 Mint Plaza where he had opened a commune-style sleeping-pod operation in 2023, with small pods renting for $700 a month. City building inspectors took issue with several aspects of the complex, but by last fall, those problems seemed to have been resolved — and Stallworth was promising an even larger version elsewhere in town.

Stallworth's business, called Brownstone Shared Housing, was itself hit with an eviction by the building's landlord in August, but Stallworth doubled down on the promise of "something bigger" in the pipeline — and he avoided that eviction, tellng the Chronicle it was a matter of "miscommunication" with the landlord.

And that something bigger is 1049 Market, which Stallworth tells the Chronicle he is in the process of purchasing. He tells the paper that he hopes to have around 400 habitable sleeping pods in the building by next summer. But with permits, demolition, construction, and likely a fair amount of deferred maintenance in the building, that seems optimistic.

Stallworth tells the paper that he had intended to rent another building for his business, but the opportunity to buy 1049 Market arose and he took it. "We had the demand, so we figured we would go for it," Stallworth says, referring to himself and business partner Christina Lennox, along with some unnamed investor. Stallworth says that they have had "hundreds" of applications from people interested in the inexpensive sleeping pods at Mint Plaza, and he expects that demand to continue once 1049 Market is ready for occupancy.

And so it comes full circle: 1049 Market Street, where many tenants were paying around $700 a month (or less) to live in small studios with shared bathrooms two decades ago, will once again be providing living spaces for similarly cheap sums in the coming years — though the spaces will be even smaller, and won't have real doors.

Previously: Mint Plaza Sleeping-Pod Commune May Be Getting Evicted, But Guy Behind It Is Planning Something Bigger