Two San Francisco supervisors want the city to buy the site of the old Pagoda Palace Theater in North Beach to help pave the way for a possible future expansion of the city's Central Subway.
The push to purchase the site comes as its owner moves forward on turning the area into a home for 19 luxury condominiums, a move some believe could slow efforts to extend the Central Subway Project all the way to Fisherman's Wharf.
Supervisors Julie Christensen and Scott Wiener on Thursday directed the San Francisco Department of Real Estate to appraise the site so that city officials could start talks with the owner.
"We'd like to see it stay in play in the hopes that it could become a critical component of our efforts to extend the subway," Christensen, who represents the area, said Thursday.
Christensen and Wiener, who recently unveiled his push to expand subway service citywide, want the site at Columbus and Powell streets to become a construction staging area and eventually an entrance for a subway station.