Gary McCoy, who won the seat by sweeping every precinct in the district last month, told the San Francisco Chronicle on Thursday that his goal of building housing on the site of either the Chevron or the Castro Gas and Food Mart has not wavered. "Nothing has changed," he said.

During an October debate at the Commonwealth Club, McCoy framed the idea as a matter of priorities. "We've got two gas stations in the Castro," he said. "Do we need two gas stations in the Castro? Probably not."

McCoy's housing platform calls for converting gas stations and parking lots into homes, and he has pledged to inventory potential sites in the district and fast-track approvals once he joins the Board of Supervisors in January. "In the middle of a housing shortage and a climate crisis, a gas station on Market Street is a monument to the past, especially as we see more and more electric vehicles on the roads," he wrote in the platform.

The proposal echoes a long history of similar efforts in San Francisco. Since the late 1980s, the Planning Department has logged more than 40 projects to convert gas stations into housing, most filed during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. In 2014, then-District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener backed replacing stations, saying the district had too many. In 2022, the Board of Supervisors approved former Mayor London Breed's "Cars to Casas" ordinance to streamline housing development on former gas stations and parking lots.

But a feasibility study of 32 scenarios under that ordinance found that development costs would outweigh revenue from residential units, concluding the proposal results in "negative residual values." The city also lost nearly half its gas stations between 2000 and 2017, making remaining sites scarce and often complicated.

The Chevron station in the Castro presents additional challenges. It reported a spill from underground storage tanks in 2003, and in 2024 the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board determined that residual petroleum-contaminated soil could pose a risk to future development. McCoy said he will look into that site after building out his team of legislative aides.

He has not yet contacted either station owner but said he will host "meetings and roundtables" to discuss the sites after he is sworn in. Messages left for both owners were not returned by publication time.

McCoy, a longtime policy advisor who served on the Market & Octavia Community Advisory Committee from 2014 to 2015, pointed to past conversions in that area as proof the process can work. "They were retired and we now have a development there," he said. "It's a long process but we need to get going."

With affordability as his top priority, McCoy said his aim is to "build affordable housing cheaper." Whether the Castro's gas stations can deliver on that promise remains an open question, but the new supervisor appears determined to try.