Housing at Former Car Wash on DivisNew

From the October 2026 print edition. October 19 was the scheduled demolition date at the time of reporting; this article does not confirm whether demolition has begun.

When the new apartment buildings go across the street at 400 Divisadero, previously the Touchless Car Wash, Nabiel Musleh will lose some of his view, but he doesn’t mind.

He lives across the street in an apartment unit on the second floor and paints in the basement. From his window, he’s watched the lot sit empty for most of a decade.

“It’s gonna be a little crazy for a year or two,” he told me, “but we need progress.”

After nearly ten years, three supervisors, and two developers who walked away, there’s finally a start date for the building project. Greystar has financing lined up for 203 apartments at the location, including 20 affordable units, with ground-floor retail.

How we got here is still up for debate. Supervisor Bilal Mahmood blames years of fights over how affordable the project should be, while his predecessor Dean Preston points to developers leaving and costs spiking. Either way, the result is the same: nothing.

And for the businesses around the corner, nothing has cost a lot.

Walt Bell, who runs Black Nose Trading Co., spent years calling the city about the encampment along Oak Street. “It kind of makes the whole area not somewhere you want to go,” he said. Shoppers tend to stay north of Oak and Fell, and the dead lot didn’t give anyone a reason to cross. Across the street, JP Kempt Barber got vandalized so often that they covered a wall in rubber duckies.

Walt thinks more neighbors could make the block feel continuous again, but he’s also watching for the next bottleneck. “[I heard Greystar] got permission to build the building, but they weren’t able to get permission to do the demolition,” he said. “That makes no sense.”

Permits came up in almost every conversation I had on this block. Pablo, the general manager of Olive Juice, a healthy café opening a pop-up garden across the street, said permits have set them back. Walt says new shops wait eight to ten months, paying rent the whole time. A new corner won’t help much if the storefronts can’t open.

Mahmood says previous attempts at this project were stuck in a version of that same trap. Under city law, a project that dragged on long enough had to be redesigned to meet each new building code, which happened every three years. Once the city’s laws were brought in line with state law, the developer saved roughly $4 million.

“It was kind of this doom loop,” said Bilal. “The longer the project goes, the more fees we effectively add on top of it.”

The plan moving forward includes considerably less affordable housing than earlier proposals: about 10%, down from 25-30%. “I wish it was more affordable,” Bilal said, “but that’s what’s feasible at this point.” For Brett, who has lived nearby for 14 years, the long wait has made the immediate choice feel straightforward. “Right now, I think any housing is good housing,” he said.

The date to watch is Oct. 19. If demolition starts on schedule, it’ll be the first major market-rate building to break ground in San Francisco this year. When Mahmood’s office asked neighbors what they wanted in the ground-floor storefronts, requests were practical: groceries, a drugstore, and cheap food now that Popeyes has closed. Those businesses would give people a reason to cross the intersection even if they don’t live in the new building.

Nabiel is preparing for an opening of his own. His gallery, Studio Nabiel, is set to open late this fall or early next year. His family owns his building, and he says that when a unit becomes available, it’s gone within minutes. He’s tired of watching a city with that much demand struggle to build.

“If we gotta complain about every single thing,” Nabiel said, “nothing’s gonna happen.”