As far as vacant buildings go, the Kneass Building, located at 671 Illinois St. in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, isn’t exceptionally ugly. Its wooden facade runs up against the sidewalk, where joggers bound by in the afternoon sun. In its fenced-in back lot, grass grows in cracks in the concrete next to a cluster of small trash bags. At points, the building has been covered in graffiti; now, its corrugated metal walls are painted over in a patchwork of grays.
The building has a few broken windows, but there are structures in worse disrepair in the neighborhood. With some substantial repairs, one could imagine it thriving as an office space, a restaurant or a community center.
Instead, for Adam Zolot, it’s the “biggest blight” along the redeveloped stretch of the Dogpatch’s waterfront, an area that includes Pier 70, the Chase Center and the Power Station…