Fear of ‘exuberant teenagers’ at center of San Francisco school expansion dispute

Plans to expand a prestigious private high school in San Francisco are being opposed by residents in the exclusive lower Pacific Heights neighborhood who claim “crowds of exuberant teenagers” would overrun the area, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday.

An appeal to block the project at 3150 California Street is set to go before the city Planning Commission next week, potentially jeopardizing San Francisco University High School’s proposal to erect a three-story, 48,000-square-foot building atop a parking lot that now houses a tiny strip mall, the newspaper reported. The school aims to build science labs classrooms and a basketball gym on the site.

But neighbors in a nearby condo building are pushing back, claiming at students will disrupt the area.

“All day long, students would be coming and going,” said Michele Stratton, president of the 3110 California Street Owners’ Association, a group of five condominium owners who live next door to the planned campus expansion, and who are leading the opposition and want major concessions, including moving the entrance of the new facility.

“This would avoid some of the disruption to the residential portion of California Street by crowds of exuberant teenagers,” another neighbor, Richard Stratton wrote in a letter to the Planning Department.