Two men move San Francisco home over by 80 feet

SAN FRANCISCO (WPVI) -- Two men are moving a home over by 80 feet to make room for classrooms and a gym at the Urban School of San Francisco.

The men are making progress and are about half way done with moving the home inch by inch. "It's exciting as everything, it doesn't move quickly, but it's moving," Mark Salkind said.

The home is located across from The Panhandle where the Urban School of San Francisco plans to build a high school gym and some classrooms.

The house has to go, but they didn't want to demolish it. "Well it's a really nice house once you go inside you'll see the moldings and everything. It's a beautiful old house and should really be preserved and it also historic value as well," Salkind said.

Neighbors agree it's worth saving. "It's our heritage. If we wanted to look like Stockton or Fremont we could do it, but people come here because it is unique," Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council spokesperson Tess Welborn said.

The school plans to turn the building into affordable housing. "It's hard to hire teachers and find places for them to live right now as everyone is aware with rents being sky high, so we will actually rent this house to faculty or staff," Salkind said.

"It defies kind of the mental logic that a building that's really solid and stationary can move, it just seems kind of magical I guess," Welborn said.

Some of the people that gathered to watch the men move the house Monday morning are donors who helped make this possible. In addition to the gym and classrooms, officials are also going to build a parking garage.