Dear Portola neighbors and Friends of 770 Woolsey supporters,

As many of you are aware, after nearly 10 years of neighborhood efforts to create an urban farm at the former University Mound Nursery at 770 Woolsey Street in the Portola, in early 2021 The Greenhouse Project and Friends of 770 Woolsey negotiated a legal right to purchase the city block of greenhouses and were given a finite amount of time to raise the funds necessary for the purchase. Subsequently, The Greenhouse Project engaged in a major capital campaign to raise the majority of the funds to purchase the site, and the Friends of 770 Woolsey participated by supporting the grassroots/community fundraising efforts. 

We now have sad news. As some of you may have read in the recent SF Chronicle article, despite having raised fifteen million dollars within the allotted time against all odds, we arrived at an impasse in the negotiations, and did not have a viable path forward to exercise our 770 Woolsey purchase option prior to its October 31, 2022 expiration. What began as a good faith agreement with the developer eroded in the final weeks as the developers' expenditures on their own project put an acquisition price out of reach and ultimately proved them to be an unwilling seller.    

We did everything possible to find a way forward to purchase the property. We spoke with legal and community experts and did our best to chase every lead and seek every angle possible. We exhausted every avenue.

We are heartbroken that we were unable to acquire the entire property and know this neighborhood is, too. So much work and effort from so many people went into this over the last ten years–it is devastating to think this vision for preserving the Portola’s history by retaining all of the last remaining greenhouses at this site is no longer moving forward.

We did save a portion of the Greenhouses!
The ray of light is that despite not being able to acquire the entire site, we did succeed in ensuring that a portion of the property—17% of the city block—will be preserved and handed over to the neighborhood for permanent community use. Within that portion, two of the greenhouses plus the steam house with its iconic metal chimney rising into the sky will be saved and restored by the developer when they construct the condos. The community will get to use that space in perpetuity. See the diagram below, which has already been approved by the Planning Department, and is now a required part of the proposed condo development.

Your gifts will be put to good use.
The approximately $40,000 in donations that came into the San Francisco Parks Alliance through the Friends of 770 Woolsey’s community fundraising efforts have supported the fundraising efforts thus far and will be applied to the future greenhouses and community space, once built.

Thank you to so many people!
We want to take a moment to express our deepest gratitude to everyone who has supported this vision and worked on its behalf:

• Supervisor Ronen, and Supervisor Campos before her, have been amazing advocates and allies throughout the past ten years of work on this project.

• The dozens of Friends of 770 Woolsey volunteers over the last 10 years, who have met in living rooms and over Zoom calls to make plans, hosted community meetings at Palega, helped us create social media strategies, a logo, and a website, gone door-to-door, sold t-shirts, handed out window signs, and staged community events have our deepest thanks for all your hard work.

• The many donors who contributed everywhere from $1 to thousands of dollars–we so appreciate your faith in this project. Those donations will continue to improve this property for the benefit of the community.

• The many dozens of neighbors who hung window signs in your homes and went to City Hall or joined City Zoom meetings to speak in support of the greenhouses, who showed everyone the passion the Portola has for its history and for urban farming.

• The 120 neighbors who wrote letters to the Historic Preservation Commission expressing why this property matters to you and your families gave us all inspiration for the work.

• The nearly 3700 individuals who signed the petition allowed us to show the widespread support we have and made so much of our progress possible.

• And most importantly, our partners at The Greenhouse Project, who devoted unending energy, time, and love to this project and this neighborhood. We are deeply grateful.

Thank you to the entire Portola for being with us on this journey. This effort has always been about building community as much as building a farm, and we have seen this neighborhood come together in amazing ways big and small over the last ten years.

Although this effort is done for now, the individual members of the Friends of 770 will be continuing to invest our time and energy into this neighborhood we love in other ways big and small, and we look forward to seeing you around the “Little ‘Hood that Could.”

Yours, 

Friends of 770 Woolsey

Visit our community page to view more from the Portola Greenhouse Gothic photo series.