There’s a visually striking addition to the ever-troubled Tenderloin — a nine-story structure clad in colorful brick that holds 113 apartments for low-income residents, plus a pair of community-oriented retail spaces.

Too bad it took 11 years to summon the newcomer into existence.

I emphasize the backstory to 222 Taylor, the new affordable housing complex at the corner of Eddy and Taylor streets, because it offers vivid insight into why the construction of such housing never keeps pace with the obvious need. At the same time, the very real quality of the end result bears witness to the determined talent that San Franciscans continue to bring to the task at hand.

That quality should be evident to anyone willing to take in the view at a dicey corner on a long-dismal stretch of Taylor Street.

The building designed by David Baker Architects for the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. manages to be jaunty and earnest at once: The facade mixes four shades of tan brick in a richly textured show of respect to its masonry-clad neighbors, yet bits and pieces fan out or pull in with attention-getting verve. The ground floor, meanwhile, places broad glass amid tall structural columns of board-formed concrete.

The columns form a pedestal to the display above, or a brawny show unto themselves. Take your pick.

Baker is one of our most dependably creative architects, adept at both ultra-lux infill like Hayes Valley’s 300 Ivy and low-income housing complexes he’s designed for nonprofit developers for two decades. His trademarks are on show here, such as the board-formed concrete or the windows framed by emphatic metal sunshades.

The dense brickwork, though, shows a place-specific attention to detail. So does the way that the energetic masonry facades are bracketed by flat white vertical bays on the ends of the L-shaped corner structure — a smart move encouraged by the city’s planning department, Baker admits.

The lobby is tall and open and spare, softened by sky-like murals by Jennifer Bockelman and a glass wall at the rear that showcases the invitingly spacious courtyard. The retail spaces have 15-foot ceilings — they’re already committed to a Yemeni restaurant and a grocer specializing in fresh produce.

All this is even more impressive given the effort and resources needed to make it happen.

The building replaces a parking lot that was purchased for $10 million in January 2008 by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. The nonprofit knows the neighborhood well and saw the corner as an ideal spot for a grocery store that could be coupled with subsidized housing.

The nonprofit and Baker crafted plans for a 15-story tower with 150 apartments atop a market and a parking podium, and it was approved in 2009. But the fallout from the fall 2008 recession was so severe, with private lenders scattering and public money drying up, that it put 222 Taylor in limbo.

A revised project, with 37 fewer units and no parking, got the green light from San Francisco’s Planning Commission in 2015 and broke ground in 2017, with an $82 million budget drawn from seven different funding sources. Even then there were hurdles: President Trump’s push for corporate-friendly tax cuts cooled interest from investors, popping a $4 million hole in the budget that the city and nonprofit scrambled to plug.

The price tag is high, yes. But the Bay Area’s economic and political reality is that nothing comes cheap.

Lining up investors takes time — time during which construction costs keep climbing. The government agencies that award grants or loans to affordable projects give extra credit to applicants that emphasize environmental sustainability, a laudable but costly expectation. Similarly, San Francisco expects construction crews on such projects to be paid union-level wages.

Experienced nonprofits like the Tenderloin group also have learned to spend extra up-front on materials so that long-term maintenance costs are reduced. That’s why there are granite kitchen counters at 222 Taylor, for instance.

And as often is the case with projects this size, regulators added demands of their own. Here, PG&E required a neighborhood-serving utility vault at a cost of roughly $900,000. Various city permit fees came in at just under $1 million.

If these details are specific to 222 Taylor, they’re not that unusual.

“With every single project, there are major funding problems to solve,” said Don Falk, the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp.’s executive director since 2005. He gives credit to staffers in such agencies at the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development: “The city has people so driven, they help us overcome barriers.”

Given all this, it’s heartening that anything gets built at all for people with few other housing options. Especially since, as this corner shows, the result is as good or better than most market-rate projects being built these days.

Outside, there’s architectural distinction. The generous courtyard by landscape architect Gary Strang is accompanied by a large community room with kitchen. The apartments are snug but well laid out, and the corridors are warmed by accent colors used by legendary architect Le Corbusier in his watercolors.

One building won’t solve the scourge of illegal drug sales and drug use that plague Tenderloin streets. Nor will it solve the city’s housing crisis.

But this self-assured newcomer at Eddy and Taylor streets makes life better for 113 families. And the block around them, as well.

John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron