Ultimately, the city’s Board of Appeals voted 4-1 in favor of Geo Group, with multiple commissioners saying that while they agreed with the activists’ perspective, that wasn’t the question they were required to answer.
“If we had a proposition on the city buying the property and handing it over to the trans community as a community center, I would vote the same way that a lot of folks in this room would,” Commissioner Jose Lopez said at the July 2025 hearing. “But that’s not what’s on the table for us.”
Mahmood said since Geo Group owns the building, the city isn’t able to demand that the company change its use. But the ordinance will ensure that Geo Group is unable to make cosmetic changes to its exterior, preserving, at least, the physical space that’s considered a major landmark for the queer community.
Since 2022, the city has designated the intersection of Turk and Taylor, as well as portions of the building exterior, as a landmark. The building was also added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2025, making it the first federally recognized historic site associated with the transgender rights movement. But activists have said those designations don’t go far enough.
“What we have in terms of landmarking 1777384180 is really a partial landmarking,” Mahmood told KQED. “We really feel that in light of what’s happening in the community that we could lose key historical features, and this is about preventing erasure of the full story of what happened here.”
Mahmood plans to introduce the ordinance on Tuesday, and it will have to go before the Land Use and Transportation Committee in the coming weeks. Mahmood said he hopes the proposal will be heard in late June or early July.
KQED’s Nastia Voynovskaya contributed to this report.
