Harrison Street in SoMa is the latest frontier for housing development in San Francisco. And it’s an unlikely location.

Home to five lanes of traffic zooming on and off the freeway, that part of Harrison Street has never offered a hospitable habitat for the investors and builders who have reshaped so much of South of Market. Between Fifth and Division streets, Harrison is home to 21 auto-related businesses — tires, mufflers, car washes, gas stations, body shops — along with warehouses that distribute everything from specialty screws to Venetian marble to linoleum flooring.

Pedestrian-oriented it is not.

Yet over the next few years Harrison, or parcels within a half-block of the street, will add 1,500 housing units in eight developments. They include a sprawling 3.4-acre collection of glass, steel and concrete structures that will add 416 apartments to the former bus storage yard at Eighth and Harrison streets. That project, the L Seven Apartments, is set to open this fall.

Also, last month a developer submitted a proposal to construct 386 units one block from the L Seven Apartments at 1144-50 Harrison, now the site of German Motors Collision Center. The developer, a joint venture between the Hanover Co. and Florida State Board of Administration, said the site represents “a great opportunity and appropriate location to address the city’s housing shortage.”

“We are seeing Harrison Street transition from an auto-serving thoroughfare to a more pedestrian scale, with the addition of homes and businesses, and have heard from local residents a desire to increase sidewalk activity and eyes on the street,” said Scott Youdall, a partner with the Hanover Co.

Part of the Western SoMa Area Plan, Harrison Street features split zoning. New housing is allowed on the north side of the street, while the south side is zoned for production, distribution and repair, known as PDR. This makes sense: Between Sixth and Eighth streets the south side of Harrison butts up against the freeway, creating a string of desolate surface parking lots that attract campers and rubbish. The north side, in contrast, backs up to the alleys and streets of SoMa’s characteristic mix of old warehouses, new lofts and modest wooden apartment buildings.

‘Forgotten middle child’

Yet while development has transformed blocks of Folsom, Townsend, Brannan and Mission streets, western Harrison Street in SoMa has seen no new development in the last decade. Unlike Folsom Street, two blocks to the north, there are no plans to make it over with wider sidewalks, al fresco dining or greenery. Unlike Brannan and Townsend streets to the south, there are no office developments popping up that cater to tech companies.

“Harrison Street is kind of the forgotten middle child of SoMa,” said developer Patrick Kennedy, who is proposing to build 200 units at 333 12th St., just off of Harrison.

But the rush of investment is creating fears that some of the gritty nightclubs and blue-collar businesses rooted there could be threatened. The property at Sixth and Harrison housing the EndUp, one of the city’s longest-running nightclubs, has been marketed as a housing development site. In early July, the owners of the Stud — a historic gay entertainment venue on the corner of Ninth and Harrison streets — announced that the single-story blue building had been sold to a Pacifica investment group. Starting in September, rent at the club triples to nearly $10,000 a month.

Nathan Allbee, a political campaign manager who is working with a group trying to preserve the Stud, said the connection between the development and rising rent at the Stud “is not lost on us.”

“The bus parking lot next to the Stud becomes a 400-unit residential building. It’s near completion. They put in new sidewalks. And then suddenly the Stud property gets sold,” he said. “It couldn’t be clearer that those things are related.”

Upside to change

Yet if increased densities could put pressures on some existing businesses, they also have the potential to help others.

At 1532 Harrison St., Build Inc. has won approvals to construct 119 units next to the Eagle Tavern, a leather bar that opened 34 years ago at 12th and Harrison. While nightlife and housing have had an uneasy co-existence in SoMa, Build Inc. decided to embrace the bar’s legacy, proposing a $1.5 million Eagle Plaza on 12th Street between Harrison and Bernice. The plaza will pay homage to the neighborhood’s leather and LGBTQ communities and, the developer hopes, solidify the tavern’s position as a destination, said Build partner Michael Yarne.

“We knew from the beginning this site was all about the Eagle,” Yarne said. “It’s so much more than just an historic gay bar. It’s an international icon, a sacred place for the leather community. Done right, development can bolster and grow the history of a place, not erase it.”

Both the Build project and Kennedy’s proposed 200-unit complex will spill out onto the Eagle Plaza, creating a micro-neighborhood right off Harrison. The two developers will pay into a special tax district that will maintain the plaza. Yarne hopes to start construction in 2017, although the project was put on hold earlier this year after a capital partner backed out. The Panoramic project will go before the City Planning Commission this fall for approvals.

Thumbs up for plans

Kissling Street resident Ben Woolsey, co-founder of the new neighborhood group Western SoMa Voice, said his organization, which has 160 members, is all for the changes along Harrison Street.

“We welcome development,” said Woolsey, who lives in one of the tech-oriented communes that have sprung up in SoMa. “The people who live in this neighborhood live here because it’s central, because it’s mixed-use, because of the nightlife. They are not the sort of people griping over views or loud neighbors. More housing means more activity and energy on the street. It means more friends.”

Kennedy and Yarne are hoping the increase in pedestrians, along with new retail, will calm traffic along Harrison Street, which carries an average of 16,000 cars on weekdays, according to MTA data.

“Just having new residents there coming and going will slow down traffic,” Kennedy said. “I think it’s going to feel like Greenwich Village or SoHo. It’s going to be an instant neighborhood. There is no parking, so everyone is going to be walking or riding bikes.”

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen