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POLA
Jan 25, 2008, 7:43 PM
Local
Supervisor’s measure could please opposing sides on parking issues
Joshua Sabatini, The Examiner
2008-01-23 11:00:00.0
Current rank: # 149 of 8,761

SAN FRANCISCO -
San Francisco could see a couple changes to parking regulations that would make condos slightly cheaper for the buyer and remove parking requirements for certain housing projects.

Parking has long been one of the most divisive political issues in The City, with the battle lines generally drawn between business advocacy groups and transit-first advocates.

While one group feels there is a need for additional parking, the other group views parking as a threat to transit-first policies and efforts to protect the environment.

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin has introduced legislation that would tweak parking requirements, but, in this case, he said there will likely be support on both sides of the aisle.

The legislation would eliminate required spaces for certain developments in The City’s denser neighborhoods and prohibit the cost of a parking space to be included in the cost of a condominium unit in large developments.

Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, a group that advocates transit-first and worked with Peskin on the legislation, said the changes “catch The City up with best practices.”

The ordinance would remove the minimum requirement of one parking space for every four units in certain housing projects.

Those developments are housing for seniors and physically handicapped people, below-market-rate housing, group housing projects, residential-care facilities and single-room occupancy units.

Radulovich said removal of the minimum requirement creates more “flexibility” and removes a financial hurdle of creating parking when it’s unnecessary.

He said an on-site parking space is priced at $50,000 to $80,000.

The legislation would also force the “unbundling” of parking spaces in housing developments of 10 or more units, prohibiting the cost of a parking space from being included in the cost of the condo unit.

Doing so would make housing less expensive for those who decide they don’t want a car and have no need for a parking space, Radulovich said.

The legislation also encourages developers to employ more “space-efficient parking” by lifting the requirement of independently accessible parking, where each parking space has its own stall accessible by the driver of the car, to allow for such things as mechanical car parking or valet parking.

The legislation will next go before a Board of Supervisors committee for a public hearing and requires a vote by the full board for approval.



http://www.examiner.com/a-1174442~Supervisor_s_measure_could_please_opposing_sides_on_parking_issues.html

BTinSF
Jan 26, 2008, 3:58 AM
^^^I'm glad to see this for a very selfish reason: I live in one of the few "unbundled" buildings that now exist and I've long thought we suffered by comparison on the real estate market because of it. It won't be such an issue if there are more such buildings, especially if some of them don't even have enough spaces to guarantee a space to every unit that wants one as my building does.

The Supes and transit advocates can say what they will, in a market where the "median" home costs something like $800K, I don't think there are that many condo buyers without cars, even if they only drive them to the supermarket and on weekend trips to the Wine Country or the Sierra.

PS: Anybody know if Tom Radulovich has a car?

northbay
Jan 26, 2008, 4:24 PM
i like this proposal. i think it will still encourage transit use.

The Supes and transit advocates can say what they will, in a market where the "median" home costs something like $800K, I don't think there are that many condo buyers without cars, even if they only drive them to the supermarket and on weekend trips to the Wine Country or the Sierra.

isnt this why there's city carshare, zipcar, club sportiva etc. etc.?

or u can take a 2 hr bus :rolleyes:

Gordo
Jan 26, 2008, 6:22 PM
The Supes and transit advocates can say what they will, in a market where the "median" home costs something like $800K, I don't think there are that many condo buyers without cars, even if they only drive them to the supermarket and on weekend trips to the Wine Country or the Sierra.

While you're right, it should be mentioned that there are thousands of places a year that sell without parking in San Francisco (primarily older places, of course). If you look at auto-ownership rates in San Francisco (and other cities around the world), the availability of parking has much more to do with rates being high than the median home cost. Hence the reason the Bayview has a higher auto-ownership rate than Nob Hill.

BTinSF
Jan 27, 2008, 5:30 AM
i like this proposal. i think it will still encourage transit use.



isnt this why there's city carshare, zipcar, club sportiva etc. etc.?

or u can take a 2 hr bus :rolleyes:

I don't know. The carshare services are presently making a big push on college campuses and I suspect they are right to see their market as more young singles and less affluent renters rather than buyers of $800K condos.

Let me be clear--I own a slightly less than $800K condo and I make do with a Honda scooter, a FastPass and a Zipcar membership, but I note nearly all my neighbors own cars.

By the way, Gordo, if you have reliable figures on rates of car ownership (and the borders of what is considered Nob Hill for this purpose) I'd be interested. I have a carless friend who lives on Hyde between Post and Sutter. We call that the 'Loin but do your numbers call it Nob Hill?

northbay
Jan 27, 2008, 6:20 AM
I don't know. The carshare services are presently making a big push on college campuses and I suspect they are right to see their market as more young singles and less affluent renters rather than buyers of $800K condos.

Let me be clear--I own a slightly less than $800K condo and I make do with a Honda scooter, a FastPass and a Zipcar membership, but I note nearly all my neighbors own cars.

but if developers dont have to include as much parking onsite then cant they transfer the savings in construction costs to the units selling price (plus the units will have less desirability as u mention ;))???

it just seems that sf needs as much housing as possible (aka close to the jobs), not more cars

BTinSF
Jan 27, 2008, 6:26 PM
^^^That is the theory for doing this, but I have always thought there were some flaws in it. For one thing, I don't think all condo buyers in SF are people who need "housing". Looking even at my own neighbors (and I'd think it would apply even more to higher end buildings), some are second home, vacation home, pied-a-terre and investment buyers who don't actually "need" housing. Also, some seem owned by wealthy foreigners whose kids are going to school in the city (you should see the cars some of them drive!).

Second, if what is built isn't adequate to the needs of buyers, they don't have to live in the city and some may chose not to. I myself wouldn't have bought in San Francisco back in 1982 if I couldn't have found a place with assured parking (there's a space for every unit in my building, it just isn't "deeded"). I was working in Oakland and wanted to live in the city, but I had to have a car and a place to park it then. Had I not found a place where I would be sure I could get a space easily every evening when I got home from a hard day's work and commute, I would have bought in Oakland.

Finally, if people perceive newly constructed units as not meeting their needs, they may just decline to buy them in favor of existing units with parking, leading to sales problems for the new units and bidding wars for the existing ones with parking. It just distorts the market.

BTinSF
Jan 27, 2008, 6:32 PM
Mexican Museum still searching for a home
Jesse Hamlin, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, January 27, 2008

Thirteen years ago, San Francisco's Mexican Museum unveiled the model for the handsome new home it planned to build on Jessie Square across from Yerba Buena Gardens: a terraced six-story structure clad in rough red stone, designed by Mexico's foremost architect, Ricardo Legorreta.

That signature building promised to raise the profile of the grassroots museum whose splendid collection of Mexican and Chicano art - about 14,000 objects encompassing pre-Columbian, Mexican folk art, modern and contemporary works - could not be displayed adequately in its cramped quarters at Fort Mason.

But after years of delays and stalled fundraising efforts, the Legorreta building has yet to rise, and probably never will.

"It's likely that it won't be built," said Tom Peterson, a longtime trustee of the Mexican Museum, which was founded in a Mission District storefront by artist Peter Rodriguez in 1975.

Instead, the museum, whose Fort Mason galleries have been closed for two years, could be integrated into a tower that Millennium Partners and JMA Ventures want to build at Third and Mission streets, overlooking Jessie Square. The developers have been talking to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, which owns the land and had committed $20 million to build the shell of the Legorreta building, about making space for the Mexican Museum in the planned mixed-use tower.

That structure, which hasn't been officially presented, would presumably rise from the site originally envisioned for the Mexican Museum and merge with the landmark ochre-brick Mercantile Building to the east. A spokesman for Millennium - which built Metreon, the Contemporary Jewish Museum on Jessie Square that's set to open in June and the Four Seasons hotel that towers behind it - confirmed that the company is "having conversations about developing a project with the Redevelopment Agency and the Mexican Museum," and that another prominent Mexican architect, Enrique Norton, has been hired to create designs for the "potential" project.

"We continue to feel that the Mexican Museum is a critical cultural institution in the city," said Redevelopment Agency Director Fred Blackwell, who declined to discuss the specifics of the plans under discussion. "Everything is speculative at this point. If we are able to get something going there, it would be similar to MOAD," Blackwell added, referring to the new Museum of the African Diaspora, another Redevelopment Agency project, which was built into the St. Regis condominium tower across from Yerba Buena.

Legorreta didn't know that his design for the Mexican Museum probably wouldn't be built. He was "a little disappointed" to hear the news, said his assistant, on the phone from Mexico City.

The trustees of the Mexican Museum, which no longer has a staff and has sought advice and assistance from the city-owned Fine Arts Museums, couldn't raise the $8 million it needed to finish the interior of the planned $30 million Legorreta building.

Like other nonprofits around the Bay Area - including the Contemporary Jewish Museum, which had to regroup and scale back its plans - the Mexican Museum's capital campaign was grounded by the dot-com bust and the ensuing recession. The city's decision to build a garage beneath Jessie Square delayed the project further.

But unlike major institutions such as the Fine Arts Museums, which took more than a decade to get the new M.H. de Young Memorial Museum built, the Mexican Museum didn't have a wealthy donor base or the fundraising expertise.

"It's hard to raise money for art, and the community that is our natural ally does not have a lot of money to give," said Mexican Museum Trustee Frank Fernandez, a retired lawyer. "The Latino community worries about working, feeding their families, getting their kids to school."

People in the arts-funding community who strongly support and value the Mexican Museum say the organization lacked sufficient fiscal savvy and stewardship. Staff and board members came and went in recent years.

"The keys to a major project in San Francisco are a compelling vision and strong and consistent leadership. With the Mexican Museum, that appeared not to have been the case," said Kary Schulman, director of the city Grants for the Arts, which stopped funding the museum when it closed its galleries to inventory the collection.

In April 2006, then-Mexican Museum Director Bill Moreno, who left at the end of that year and now runs the new Claremont Museum in Southern California, said the museum had raised about $4.7 million. A $2.4 million grant from the California Cultural and Historical Endowment brought the museum closer to its $8 million goal.

Then the Mercantile Building was bought by the developers, and "that changed the landscape," Peterson said.

He and other trustees would've preferred to press ahead with the Legorreta building, but that no longer seems feasible. They're now committed to opening a scaled-down museum on the same site. They say they would have to raise $5 million to $8 million to do it (the $2.4 million grant from the state is being held for them).

"We're not here to build the Legorreta building. We're here to preserve and show the collection," Fernandez said. "We have downsized to try to get to a situation where the museum that is being built will be sustainable." The board members, Fernandez added, have spent about $50,000 a year out of their own pockets to pay the museum's rent at Fort Mason, insure the collection and pay other bills.

They've met with architect Norton and seen preliminary designs of the Third and Mission tower. If the plans could be worked out, they say, the Mexican Museum would occupy about 45,000 square feet - 20,000 less than originally planned - on three or four floors, and open onto the plaza. Norton had sought the original Mexican Museum commission that went to his more-famous Mexican colleague.

"We're very happy that Enrique is the designer, because he has a sensitivity to what the Mexican Museum's goals and objectives are," Peterson said.

Some donors withdrew their pledges when they saw no progress in the construction of the Legorreta building. But board members say they're confident those donors will come back if a new deal is struck and a construction date is set. One of them is Modesto housing developer Scott Salazar Myers, who withdrew a $1.5 million matching gift he'd pledged for the new building.

"I didn't think the museum was moving ahead on an appropriate timeline," said Myers, who collects 19th and 20th century Mexican art and called the museum "a much-needed cultural resource."

If the museum were to make a deal with the developers, he said, and had "a restored board with a specific business plan that adequately addressed the issues of the facility and the ongoing operating budget, not only would I be interested in getting back in the picture, but I think a lot of people would be as well."

Some people in the arts community have expressed concern about the well-being of the museum's art collection, which includes ancient and colonial-era works, an array of Mexican folk art, including an important collection donated by the Rockefeller family, Jose Clemente Orozco paintings and Diego Rivera drawings. Most of the works are stored at Fort Mason, and others are being kept in an off-site art-storage facility.

"People are wondering what's happening, because the collection is a treasure," said Schulman of Grants for the Arts. "Our hope is that at some point it will be back on public display."

Several years ago, Charles Little, a longtime Mexican Museum contributor, donated hundreds of pieces of Mexican folk art that had filled the Victorian living room of his late partner, Rex May. Little made the gift under the provision that a replica of the living room be installed in the new museum. He agreed to pay for its installation, shipping, maintenance and other costs. The collection was crated and shipped to Fort Mason (it's now in an art-storage facility).

Little said he hasn't heard from anyone at the museum in a year or two and would like to find out what's going on. "It doesn't seem to be a functioning museum entity," he said.

Tere Romo, the museum's longtime curator who'd been working only 40 hours a month, resigned in June, along with registrar Maren Jones, after the board gave a Fort Mason administrator a key to the museum in case of emergency or the need for boiler-room repairs. Providing access to the museum without a staff member present goes against art-museum protocol, said Romo, who now works at UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center.

"I could no longer control access to or guarantee the security of the collection and donor files," Romo wrote in her letter of resignation.

Fernandez, who praised Romo's work, said the collection is safe and secure and there's no cause for concern. He said he's on hand when maintenance personnel go into the boiler room. And he says it's wise, in terms of protecting the art, that Fort Mason's chief operating officer, Al Goncalves , has a key in the event of an emergency.

"He's assured me that he will be present to observe any repair work being done and that nothing happens to the collection," Fernandez said.

At the urging of Mayor Gavin Newsom, Fine Arts Museums Director John Buchanan has met with Mexican Museum board members to consult about fundraising and the care of the collection.

Buchanan, who said he and his staff are providing technical assistance, arranged for the Fine Arts Museums' chief registrar, Therese Chen, to go to Fort Mason to "make sure the current storage and care of the collection is adequate. It seemed OK. We don't think it needs to be moved for safety reasons."

Mexican Museum officials, who are still putting on the Street Art program that sends artists into schools, would like to vacate Fort Mason to save money and store the art elsewhere. The Fine Arts Museums, Buchanan said, don't have the space, but suggested the Mexican Museum use the art-storage facility near the airport that the de Young used while its new building was under construction (the de Young's 2006 exhibition "Chicano Visions" was co-presented by the Mexican Museum).

"We want people to be assured that the collection is safe," Peterson said, "that it's in good hands and that we're working toward a future building that will be sustainable, where it can be made available to the community at large in a very desirable way."

That would please a lot of people, including Connie Wolf, director of the new Contemporary Jewish Museum.

"The Mexican Museum is part of the cultural history and life of the city, and we want it to work," she said.

Legorreta Design
http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/01/27/ba_mexmuseo01.jpg

Museum contact

To contact the Mexican Museum, write to Mexican Museum, Bldg. D, Fort Mason Center, Laguna and Marina Boulevard, San Francisco, CA 94123

E-mail Jesse Hamlin at jhamlin@sfchronicle.com.
Source: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/27/MNEFUJQ4E.DTL

Millenium Partners list this lot at their web site as one for "future development": http://www.millenniumptrs.com/futureproperties.cfm

northbay
Jan 28, 2008, 3:27 AM
It just distorts the market.

does it? it doesnt require anything (parking), it just stops requiring it.

if the market dictates a demand for parking, i think developers will just continue to include it (or more of it)

BTinSF
Jan 28, 2008, 6:44 AM
^^^I would prefer the city let developers build parking or not as they see the demands of the market for their product. In that case, I think there could be niches for less expensive units without parking of any kind as well as some with "unbundled" parking and some with deeded parking. I do think it distorts the market to place a requirement either way.

The proposal we are discussing, as I understand it, doesn't just remove a requirement. It forbids "bundling" meaning selling a unit and a parking space together. That may be OK if it still allows unit purchasers to purchase a parking space separately. But if it requires communal ownership of the spaces by the Homeowners' Association or by a third party, with parkers paying rent or a fee to use a space, then it subjects those buyers to the future fluxuations of the marketplace as to the cost of parking their cars because whoever owns the parking can raise the cost to car owners to whatever the market will tolerate.

To require parking raises the cost of a home for those who don't want a car, but to forbid deeded parking may raise the cost for those who believe they have to have one as I did when I was working in Oakland (I tried taking public transit to work once--took me 2 1/2 hours each way). And I think it's presumptuous for the Supervisors, all of whom have cars so far as I know, to try to dictate the transportation lifestyle of the rest of us.

If they want us to ride transit, do something to make it fast, cheap and efficient. THAT's their proper role and they haven't done it very well.

peanut gallery
Jan 28, 2008, 7:14 AM
a tower that Millennium Partners and JMA Ventures want to build at Third and Mission streets, overlooking Jessie Square. The developers have been talking to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, which owns the land and had committed $20 million to build the shell of the Legorreta building, about making space for the Mexican Museum in the planned mixed-use tower.

That structure, which hasn't been officially presented, would presumably rise from the site originally envisioned for the Mexican Museum and merge with the landmark ochre-brick Mercantile Building to the east.

I saw that in the paper today, too, and it made me smile. I can't wait to hear the scale they have in mind.

FourOneFive
Jan 28, 2008, 1:58 PM
^ well the site is zoned for 400', so i'd expect something the scale of the four seasons tower. let's hope it'll be as well designed as the millennium and four seasons towers.

Gordo
Jan 28, 2008, 5:40 PM
The proposal we are discussing, as I understand it, doesn't just remove a requirement. It forbids "bundling" meaning selling a unit and a parking space together. That may be OK if it still allows unit purchasers to purchase a parking space separately. But if it requires communal ownership of the spaces by the Homeowners' Association or by a third party, with parkers paying rent or a fee to use a space, then it subjects those buyers to the future fluxuations of the marketplace as to the cost of parking their cars because whoever owns the parking can raise the cost to car owners to whatever the market will tolerate.

The proposal doesn't forbid parking spaces to be sold, it just forbids parking spaces from being included in with the unit. It removes an incredible distortion that has been in place.

And I think it's presumptuous for the Supervisors, all of whom have cars so far as I know, to try to dictate the transportation lifestyle of the rest of us.

Just as it was presumptuous for the Supes in the 50's to try and dictate transportation lifestyle to us by requiring one parking space per unit - something we're finally getting around to fixing.

I still also stand by the point that the Planning Department should be the one establishing minimums/maximums in different places. The PD has its problems, but they're really the people that should be able to determine where streets are at capacity for autos but not at capacity for people. Those areas should have more housing permitted for people, but not necessarily more housing permitted for vehicles.


BT - I'm still working on finding the heat maps regarding car ownership rates throughout the city. It was something produced by SPUR several years ago, but I can't seem to find it online anywhere - I know that I have a paper copy somewhere - they are incredibly interesting.

BTinSF
Jan 29, 2008, 5:14 AM
I still also stand by the point that the Planning Department should be the one establishing minimums/maximums in different places. The PD has its problems, but they're really the people that should be able to determine where streets are at capacity for autos but not at capacity for people.

And I stand by the view that government--including the Planning Dept.--should let developers build or not build parking as required to meet the market demand for units with or without it.

Re the parking map, it may be a chicken or egg thing--do people give up their cars because transit is good or do people who don't want cars move to neighborhoods where transit is good?

Gordo
Jan 29, 2008, 5:46 AM
And I stand by the view that government--including the Planning Dept.--should let developers build or not build parking as required to meet the market demand for units with or without it.

That assumes infinite capacity for autos on streets. We don't allow interchanges every 100 feet on a freeway for a reason.

Re the parking map, it may be a chicken or egg thing--do people give up their cars because transit is good or do people who don't want cars move to neighborhoods where transit is good?

It's about equal parts of both I would imagine. Personally, I don't really use transit much. I live a few blocks from where I work and I have a carshare membership. Most days I don't need a car or transit. I moved where I did in large part so that I wouldn't have a long commute and because I wanted an urban lifestyle - giving up the car was entirely because it was inconvenient to keep it for the very limited use that I needed it for.

nequidnimis
Jan 29, 2008, 7:55 AM
I tried taking public transit to work once--took me 2 1/2 hours each way.

You were a doctor and in the Navy, so I would guess you worked at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital: 10 minutes walk from Opera Plaza to Bart platform, 1 minute wait (assuming you look up the BART schedule), 23 minutes BART ride, 15 minutes wait for AC transit bus 56, 20 minutes bus ride: it is under 1 hour 10 mins. A lot of people spend more time in their cars...

peanut gallery
Jan 30, 2008, 4:54 AM
^ well the site is zoned for 400', so i'd expect something the scale of the four seasons tower. let's hope it'll be as well designed as the millennium and four seasons towers.

Sounds good to me. And that size would fit in nicely (with no worry about shading YB).

Cory
Mar 1, 2008, 5:47 AM
I took this photo two days ago in Downtown Oakland and I was wondering what was the hole on the center left? I believe it is right outside the 12th Street BART station.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3251/2297195986_87aa295164_b.jpg

nequidnimis
Mar 1, 2008, 6:43 AM
I believe it used to be Burger King and DeLauer's magazine stand.

Cory
Mar 1, 2008, 7:37 AM
Thanks for the info. Does anyone know if there is a proposal for the site? Would be cool to see an infill project that could compliment a restored building next door if anyone is visionary enough. Anyone know the name of the building next door? I was told by a lady in dt Oakland it was a building that was used for the old steetcar that use to run down the street.

Reminiscence
Mar 1, 2008, 8:33 AM
With all my jetting around of late, I seem to have missed last month's update. I've removed Intercontinental with its opening last Thursday. Also, with One Rincon's not entirely complete but open South Tower, that too has been removed.

March 2008:

http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/7088/sfdiagramxs7.gif

nequidnimis
Mar 1, 2008, 9:01 PM
You'll be able to put One Rincon Hill back this month, no doubt.

quashlo
Mar 2, 2008, 4:38 PM
Thanks for the info. Does anyone know if there is a proposal for the site? Would be cool to see an infill project that could compliment a restored building next door if anyone is visionary enough. Anyone know the name of the building next door? I was told by a lady in dt Oakland it was a building that was used for the old steetcar that use to run down the street.

Burger King and DeLauer's are further up closer to 14th Street. This lot has been empty for a while, and there were several proposals, first for an office tower, then a hotel tower. The latest proposal is for another office tower, with details here (http://oaklandnet.com/government/ceda/revised/planningzoning/Commission/1100Broadway-DRCreport.pdf). The adjacent building is the Key Systems Building, which was the headquarters of the old Key System streetcar system. It's a historic building and would be renovated with the proposed new structure.

peanut gallery
Mar 2, 2008, 5:31 PM
Great find, quashlo. I found a rendering on SKS' website:
http://www.sksinvestments.com/images/ok/1100_broadway.jpg

Cory
Mar 3, 2008, 7:30 PM
Great finds quashlo and peanut. The design is ok but I guess it goes nicely with the rehab.

San Frangelino
Mar 6, 2008, 7:37 PM
Website for "the new tallest" in Jack London Square.
http://www.the-ellington.com/

peanut gallery
Mar 7, 2008, 10:31 PM
Does anyone know the plan for the plot between 650 and 660 Mission? They are just finishing demolishing the previous building, which is already an improvement. I tried searching every even numbered address between 650 and 660 on the SF Planning website and couldn't find anything. It's not a large space and most of the neighbors are of modest height, so I doubt anything more than a few stories is going in there. But I am curious to see what is coming.

WildCowboy
Mar 8, 2008, 2:45 AM
^^^ SPUR Urban Center (http://www.spur.org/programs/spurcenter/default.shtm)

Curbed article (http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2008/02/20/spur_ahead_urban_center_breaks_ground.php) from a few weeks ago on the groundbreaking.

northbay
Mar 8, 2008, 2:58 AM
Website for "the new tallest" in Jack London Square.
http://www.the-ellington.com/

jack london square is the perfect place for high density housing. i know theyve built a lot there already, but none that were really tall (or tall enough in my book). its across the freeway from down town, u have a train station, a lot of retail, as well as water nearby.

this new proposal is not bad, but im not sure about the base. the gold/green screen seems funky.

northbay
Mar 8, 2008, 3:01 AM
^^^ SPUR Urban Center (http://www.spur.org/programs/spurcenter/default.shtm)

Curbed article (http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2008/02/20/spur_ahead_urban_center_breaks_ground.php) from a few weeks ago on the groundbreaking.

wow, this is ssiiiiiiiiiiick. an 'urban center'?!?

its kinda like a tangible version of this website

peanut gallery
Mar 8, 2008, 3:36 AM
Very nice! Thanks Cowboy. Here's a construction pic:
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/629/dsc09425av3.jpg

northbay
Mar 8, 2008, 3:39 AM
^ that site looks tiny! its barely two car lengths wide

peanut gallery
Mar 8, 2008, 5:58 AM
Yeah, and an articuted bus (which had just passed out of view) completely obliterates it. I had to shoot quickly before the next one came by.

BTinSF
Mar 14, 2008, 3:01 PM
Friday, March 14, 2008
Oakland board OKs plan for 20-story office tower
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen

SKS Investments has received Planning Commission approval to build a 320,000-square-foot office tower in downtown Oakland, but with a possible recession looming the developer does not plan to join Shorenstein and Brandywine Realty Trust in starting construction without a tenant in hand.

The proposed 20-story tower at 1100 Broadway, which also includes the restoration of the adjacent landmark Key System Building, won unanimous planning commission backing on Feb. 13, and a two-week appeals period has now expired.

SKS Vice President Steve Wolmark said the company would start ramping up leasing efforts.

"Given where the market is today we wouldn't build spec," he said. "Our plan is to secure an anchor tenant now that we have entitlements."

Class A office buildings in downtown Oakland have a healthy 8 percent vacancy rate, with overall city vacancy rates weighing in at about 10 percent, according to Colliers International's Ken Meyersieck, who is handling the leasing of 1100 Broadway for the developer. But leasing activity in the second half of 2007 was flat and has remained tepid during the first quarter of 2008.

The approval comes as Shorenstein Properties prepares to start pile-driving on the 23-story, 500,000-square-foot 601 City Center, and Brandywine is completing a 215,000-square-foot building next to 2101 Webster St. But neither speculative project has snagged any tenants thus far.

The Broadway building design features energy-efficient, green attributes such as rain-catching systems to recycle rainwater and solar panels to generate electricity. The architect on the project is KMD principal David Hobstetter. SKS is shooting for LEED gold certification which is the second highest sustainability rating of the U.S. Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

The project drew rave reviews from planning commissioners, according to minutes of the meeting, with Planning Commission Vice Chair Michael Colbruno calling it "one of the best projects I've seen" in 20 years on the commission. Chairman Douglas Boxer said the building "sends the best kind of signal to other builders, that this is the quality of building we want to see more of in Oakland."

jkdineen@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4971


Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/03/17/story6.html

Cory
Mar 14, 2008, 9:14 PM
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/03/17/story6.html


Well with that said maybe they have plans for a different design......hopefully.

San Frangelino
Mar 14, 2008, 9:47 PM
I have an San Francisco Magazine from last year that had a spread to advertise SKS Investments and it showed 1100 broakdway with a different design and taller tower. I'll see if I can find where I put it and scan it over the weekend. That might be the to tower now proposed.

San Frangelino
Mar 14, 2008, 10:30 PM
Cross that last post out. I just found the new rendering on oakland's business site. http://www.business2oakland.com/main/centraldistrict.htm

http://www.business2oakland.com/main/images/1100Broadway-LookingSoutheast_10.3.07pic.GIF


Here is the description that goes with it:

1100 Broadway and Key System Building: Currently in the City's planning process, SKS Investments is proposing a LEED Silver rated (or higher) complex at 13th and Broadway that will restore the historic Key System Building and build a new 20-story Class A office building. The total building rentable building area will total 310,000 square feet of office space and 9,800 square feet of retail space. Construction is expected to begin in late 2008.

Cory
Mar 14, 2008, 10:43 PM
An improvement in my opinion. You can only do so much with a 20 story tower and it is not a bad design. Thanks for the link. Lot's of interesting pdf"s in there.

peanut gallery
Mar 15, 2008, 11:42 PM
That looks way better IMO, though it does overpower the old Key System Building. It has to be the current design because the one I found certainly isn't 20 stories and the write-up says it's only 210,000 square feet. I hope they can find some tennants to get it started.

OaklandFan72737489
Mar 18, 2008, 10:48 PM
I believe it used to be Burger King and DeLauer's magazine stand.

DeLauer's 24 Hour Newstand and Burger King are still there. They're located up a block (near 14th and Broadway.) The 1100 Broadway building is near 13th and Broadway.

The 1100 Broadway site has been empty for years. IIRC, in 2001 there was a proposal to build a small/botique Hilton Keystone Hotel. It got nixed very quickly when the economy soon went south.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2002/03/25/story4.html

Complex01
Mar 27, 2008, 4:01 PM
Great stuff going on. I like the diagram at the top of the previos page. Nice updates...

:yes:

peanut gallery
Mar 27, 2008, 5:21 PM
SKS updated their page about 1100 Broadway. The image I posted on the previous page now has the new design that San Frangelino posted and the text has been updated to reflect the larger scale of the building. We can now see a new angle (including solar panels on the roof) and a larger image.

Cory
Mar 31, 2008, 5:34 AM
SKS updated their page about 1100 Broadway. The image I posted on the previous page now has the new design that San Frangelino posted and the text has been updated to reflect the larger scale of the building. We can now see a new angle (including solar panels on the roof) and a larger image.

NICE! My comment in post #1025 almost sounds stupid now under your new post.

Reminiscence
Apr 2, 2008, 5:48 AM
Here's April's update. Hopefully I can start up on the other two soon:

http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/2981/sfdiagramfs7.gif

peanut gallery
Apr 2, 2008, 4:31 PM
Wow, those are right up to the minute in accuracy. Were you in the city yesterday?

dimondpark
Apr 2, 2008, 10:57 PM
Here are renderings of 601 City Center from the website

http://www.601citycenter.com/images/interior/renderings/building2_800px.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2295/2224532966_33d5f8740f_o.jpg

peanut gallery
Apr 3, 2008, 3:22 AM
NICE! My comment in post #1025 almost sounds stupid now under your new post.

Yeah, same with my follow-ups. Oh well. :)

peanut gallery
Apr 3, 2008, 3:24 AM
Wow, that's a huge improvement over what we first saw a few months ago. Thanks for finding those, dimondpark.

Reminiscence
Apr 3, 2008, 3:37 AM
Wow, those are right up to the minute in accuracy. Were you in the city yesterday?

I actually havent been to the city in a while because I've been busy with school. That, in combination with our photographer Dave's leave of absence, has left me in a sort of "guess where it is now" type of thought. I guess I got pretty lucky this time.

Good thing we still have you in town though. Just dont go anywhere until Dave gets back! :P ;)

peanut gallery
Apr 3, 2008, 5:30 AM
I've been around, just unable to get out and shoot much lately. I'll be gone most of next week though, so hopefully Dave will be back by then.

Jerry of San Fran
Apr 11, 2008, 2:03 AM
A mobile crane reaches over Trinity Plaza. The construction crane is now assembled. It will not be long before I see a new building growing in my view.

Picture was taken from the Fox Plaza 27th floor on April 2, 2008 from my apartment.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2367/2403915155_6469d2355d_b.jpg

peanut gallery
Apr 11, 2008, 6:29 AM
Cool shot, Jerry. Don't forget, Trinity has its own thread (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=129548) too.

Downtown Dave
Apr 12, 2008, 10:31 AM
I'll be back Saturday evening. I am halfway through my exciting 30 hour journey now. :sleep:

The fox plaza shots are terrific; that should be a great vantage point to view the construction.

peanut gallery
Apr 24, 2008, 5:01 AM
(Technically, this isn't construction, but it didn't seem to fit anywhere else and starting a thread is overkill.)

Cupid's Arrow is getting a facelift, I presume:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3071/2438278288_31d555e1ed_b.jpg

Reminiscence
May 5, 2008, 6:22 AM
Its a little late, but here's May's shot:

http://img354.imageshack.us/img354/9286/sfdiagramfr6.gif

peanut gallery
May 6, 2008, 5:08 PM
From today's Chronicle, a Nevius article on the new Salvation Army housing and community center (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/06/BADC10H5NI.DTL) in the Tenderloin:

Tenderloin long needed Salvation Army center
C.W. Nevius
Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Whenever a plan for new housing or facilities comes up in San Francisco's poorest downtown neighborhood, it seems the process deteriorates into local politics, special interest groups and petty bickering.

But not this time. The Salvation Army is putting the finishing touches on a remarkable 135,380-square-foot housing and community center, which will offer a huge gymnasium, pool, workout facility, game room, rock-climbing wall and even a dance studio for the use of Tenderloin kids and residents. Next to it is Railton Place, a 110-unit affordable housing residence.

The entire facility, which will be dedicated on June 27, is at 240 Turk St. That's smack in the middle of one of the city's most troubled neighborhoods.

"We hope to be an island in a sea of shark-infested waters," said Maj. George Rocheleau, a Salvation Army officer who will be running the community center. "Don't mean to sound so dramatic, but I think the analogy is appropriate based on the reality of this at times being a very dangerous neighborhood."

Dangerous at times? No offense to the major, but that might be a little optimistic. Strolling up Turk Street in the last three weeks I've seen a guy nonchalantly puffing on a crack pipe, a near fistfight and open drug dealing.

In such an environment, the idea of creating a secure, supervised play and learning facility is too attractive to quibble about. Even influential activists like Randy Shaw - who, as the head of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, opposed some proposed developments in the area - praises the project.

"It is a very, very, very positive development," Shaw said. "Do you know how long we've been saying we need a facility like this?"

So is this the beginning of a new age of cooperation and camaraderie in the Tenderloin?

Probably not. As promising as the Salvation Army project is, there are some significant reasons why it sailed through the often-rocky process unscathed.

"It is still a slow process," said Don Falk, executive director of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Association, a nonprofit group that works to provide affordable housing. "But I don't have any doubt that theirs was faster than others."

There are several reasons. The Salvation Army already owned the land, for one, bypassing a land-buying process that can take a year or more, Falk said. Also, the organization has a proven track record of running programs and took the time to meeting with neighborhood groups early in the planning.

Oh, and several million dollars of private money didn't hurt.

The $57 million community center and housing unit was made possible by a gift from the late McDonald's heir Joan Kroc. Kroc, who died of brain cancer in 2003, arranged to donate about $1.5 billion to the Salvation Army to build community centers across the country. The first was in her hometown, San Diego. The San Francisco Kroc center will be the second to open, followed by 29 in other states. (However, Kroc stipulated that the local chapters would have to raise the money to maintain and run the centers on their own.)

In San Francisco, it is always better to have big buckets of private money. Falk said a typical publicly financed housing project would have several different funding sources, each with its own agenda and stipulations.

"Public money is highly scrutinized," Falk said. "For example, a private developer can basically make a phone call and hire an architect. If we hire an architect in 90 days, we're doing it fast."

As for the housing component, Falk said the project benefited from the neighborhood's diversity. The 110-unit Railton Place will offer 40 permanent apartments for the chronically homeless who meet the Salvation Army criteria, meaning that they are actively working toward rehabilitating their lives. There will be another 28 units for homeless veterans and 27 for ex-foster kids who are sent out on their own at the age of 18.

Falk said concentrating so many people with such problems in a single facility would create a huge outcry in most neighborhoods.

"Here, these are just our folks," he said.

An important component of Railton Place is that most units are set up for "transitional" needs. Residents must have completed sobriety and vocational courses and are expected to move through the program and out of the housing in two years.

Sounds pretty good doesn't it?

"All things taken together," said David Seward, chief financial officer of nearby UC Hastings College of the Law, "it is clearly a great project."

So everyone is happy, right? Not entirely. Shaw says this is nice, but thinks the media and the public will continue to focus on what he thinks is a mistaken impression of the neighborhood.

"If something good happens in the Tenderloin, no one even knows about it," Shaw said. "Murders are the big thing in the Tenderloin."

So much for the new era of goodwill.

peanut gallery
May 7, 2008, 4:04 AM
^^^^I decided to take a walk down there and see it for myself. Looks pretty good to me:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2299/2472779228_9f2e599983_b.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2326/2472780762_fd26c0868c_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3077/2472782322_f1e61cb0db_b.jpg

peanut gallery
May 7, 2008, 4:42 AM
Hey Rem, are One Hawthorne and Trinity too short to be included on your diagram?

Reminiscence
Jun 4, 2008, 5:36 AM
A little late, but not much has changed since last time:

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/8724/sfdiagramth4.gif

San Frangelino
Jun 13, 2008, 2:49 PM
(remove)

San Frangelino
Jun 13, 2008, 2:51 PM
(remove)

San Frangelino
Jun 13, 2008, 2:56 PM
From:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/13/BUHH1187ON.DTL&type=realestate

Old Schlage Lock factory in S.F. finally sold
James Temple, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, June 13, 2008

The owner of Visitacion Valley's Schlage Lock Co. factory has settled a decade-old contamination lawsuit and transferred the property, clearing one of the biggest obstacles blocking a community-blessed plan to convert the boarded-up site into housing, parks, offices and stores.

Ingersoll-Rand Co. of Montvale, N.J., which closed the factory in 1999, agreed to hand over the 12.3 acres to Universal Paragon Corp. In turn, the San Francisco developer dropped its $100 million lawsuit alleging the Schlage operations had polluted the groundwater at their adjacent parcel.

Terms of the settlement, reached late last month, included agreements with third parties that transferred liability for the soil and groundwater cleanup and insured against the possibility of unknown contaminants and unexpected costs. The deal clears the way for cleanup to begin at the industrial site on Bayshore Boulevard, where locks were manufactured for more than 70 years.

The plan for the combined 20-acre property includes 1,250 residential units, with 25 percent set aside as affordable, as well as three parks and several stores, including a supermarket. The Schlage Lock office building will be converted into community space and offices. Universal Paragon and their backers plan to invest $500 million over 10 years into the project, with another $95 million coming from public financing.

"It will bring half a billion dollars in private investment, hundreds of affordable-housing units and the cleanup and redevelopment of a shuttered site," said Jonathan Scharfman, development director at Universal Paragon. "This is a major project in an area that has long been on the losing side of economic development in San Francisco."

It will also be a pilot project in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development program, a new effort by the U.S. Green Building Council to evaluate the sustainability of neighborhood design. Universal Paragon is aiming for the Gold rating, the highest standard, Scharfman said.

The vision for the property grew out of a series of community meetings beginning in the early part of the decade, after Home Depot's bid to build a store there failed. Neighborhood groups fought the giant retailer's plan, citing traffic and other concerns, and Supervisor Tom Ammiano sponsored legislation that blocked "big box" outlets on the site.

In 2002, the Planning Department published the results of a two-month community planning effort, which called for building a grocery store, open space and housing on the property. Mayor Gavin Newsom's office established the Visitacion Valley Citizens Advisory Committee in 2006 to refine that plan.

"This is the community's vision for the site," said Rich Hillis, deputy director of the Mayor's Office of Economic Development. "We and the property owners are working to implement that vision."

In 2005, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell advanced legislation that placed the Schlage Lock factory and nearby parcels into a redevelopment survey area, potentially providing the city additional financial and legal powers to push the transformation of the site. The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency published a draft environmental impact report for the project on June 3, opening a public comment period.

"We're excited because it's the centerpiece of the redevelopment plan," Fred Blackwell, executive director of the Redevelopment Agency, said of the project. "It's an opportunity to clean that site up, but more importantly, to turn it into a very strong and viable part of the community."

Several steps remain before Universal Paragon can break ground, however. The Redevelopment Commission and Planning Commission must both approve the redevelopment plan and environmental impact report, and the Redevelopment Agency still has to negotiate a development agreement with the company.

Universal Paragon expects to begin demolition and cleanup work this fall and construction in early 2010. The company has proposed several other projects in San Francisco and Peninsula, including the Sierra Point hotel and condominium complex and the Brisbane Baylands mixed-use development.

E-mail James Temple at jtemple@sfchronicle.com.

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/06/12/bu-schlage13_ph4_0498617315.jpg

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/06/13/bu_site.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3171/2574899209_b3f11fab21_o.jpg

vizvalleykid
Jun 15, 2008, 5:45 AM
Woah this is great news for my area! Finally that warehouse will be torn down and that area can come alive!:notacrook:

northbay
Jun 16, 2008, 4:54 PM
^ that does look like a good project.


"It will also be a pilot project in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development program, a new effort by the U.S. Green Building Council to evaluate the sustainability of neighborhood design. Universal Paragon is aiming for the Gold rating, the highest standard, Scharfman said."


actually the highest rating is platinum, isnt it?

CHapp
Jun 16, 2008, 6:05 PM
:previous: Yes, I understand it's platinum, too.

munkyman
Jun 24, 2008, 2:22 AM
Proposed Fourth Street rezoning from the Mayor's Office.

http://www.examiner.com/a-1454228~Fourth_Street_s_future_lined_with_tall_stories.html?cid=temp-popular

Fourth Street’s future lined with tall stories

A wall of high-rise office towers will stretch southeast from San Francisco’s downtown along Fourth Street to the emerging Mission Bay business and biotechnology research hub under a new long-term plan by city officials.

The Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development recently directed the Planning Department to scale back modest rezoning proposals for the low-rise Fourth Street corridor between Folsom and Townsend streets. Instead, high-rises may eventually be allowed to crowd the planned Fourth Street path of the Central Subway, a multibillion dollar rail project.

The Central Subway will link the Caltrain station at Fourth and Townsend streets with the multi-modal Transbay Transit Center planned at First and Mission streets, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency documents show. Some of the route will be above-ground. Full funding has not been secured for the subway, which is planned for construction between 2010 and 2016.

Under current zoning rules, building heights along Fourth Street are limited to 65 feet, said Planning Department official Ken Rich, who is leading the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan — a sweeping rezoning effort covering 2,200 acres of the Central Waterfront, Potrero Hill, Mission and South of Market neighborhoods.

Fourth Street rezoning efforts will effectively be put into a “holding pattern” until the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan is finished and approved, which is expected later this year, Rich said.

It’s unclear how high the new Fourth Street buildings will rise, but the Planning Department is pushing a separate plan to allow a landmark tower above the new transit center to reach 1,000 feet, while most other towers in The City would be capped at 800 feet or less. The Transamerica Pyramid is roughly 850 feet.

Mayoral development adviser Michael Yarne said the new Fourth Street proposal makes economic and environmental sense.

If built, the corridor’s office buildings will fill with workers who ride trains through the new subway, said Yarne, who added that concentrating high-rise towers along a transit route will help protect the environment from car emissions.

“If we’re going to be supporting a billion-plus dollar investment in a new subway, the least we could is to plan for transit-oriented development along the line,” Yarne said.

CHapp
Jun 24, 2008, 5:57 AM
So Michael Yarney is now Mayor Newsom's development adviser? Must be the same opportunist I knew when he was still attending graduate school at Cal. Seems he hasn't gotten the spelling of his name through to the press yet.

Reminiscence
Jun 24, 2008, 7:07 AM
Sounds like an interesting plan to me, however I'm not sure how welcoming it would sound to people if you told them you were building a "wall" of high-rises.

CHapp
Jun 24, 2008, 9:11 AM
Some of them are bound to turn into nimbys & bananas the second they hear about this.

AndrewK
Jul 1, 2008, 5:42 PM
well, more about something not getting built, but its been discussed here a bit before:

Theater a monument to inaction in North Beach

C.W. Nevius

While pigeons swoop and poop inside the empty Pagoda Theater, there are hints of a neighborhood uprising in North Beach. Could it be that the populace is finally going to stand up and demand an end to policies that have created boarded-up storefronts in one of San Francisco's most vibrant neighborhoods?

Maybe.

Just to review, the battle lines are drawn between the powerful Telegraph Hill Dwellers - a neighborhood group headed by Nancy Shanahan, wife of Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin - and local merchants who complain that the group kills potential projects by stalling them until they run out of money.

Peskin and Shanahan say they are preserving North Beach, keeping it from becoming a strip of T-shirt shops and bars. Peskin has introduced new legislation aimed at stopping the trend of replacing failed businesses with restaurants.

But critics, like North Beach Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Marsha Garland, think the Telegraph Hill Dwellers are attempting to construct a kind of Potemkin village, filled with quaint, out-of-date shops such as a neighborhood cobbler.

"They cannot force North Beach back to the '50s or '60s," Garland said. "Those days are over."

With Peskin termed out this year, and the election coming up to replace him as supervisor, this is the hottest topic in North Beach, and it is only gaining momentum. Candidate Lynn Jefferson, of the North Beach Neighbors Association, has taken "Enough with the Plywood" as her campaign slogan. Favorite son Joe Alioto said he knocks on doors for four hours each day and finds the conversation always seems to go back to the same topic.

"People say, 'Will you please do something about the Pagoda Theater?' " Alioto said. "I call it the black eye of North Beach. It is the poster child for the boarded-up storefronts."

The Pagoda, vacant for 14 years, has been caught up in endless squabbles over how it can be developed. Today it is a smelly, abandoned shell, home to hundreds of pigeons. Developer Joel Campos has a plan to build condominiums and a restaurant there, but some neighborhood activists believe Peskin and Shanahan are stalling the efforts.

"All the opposition seems to be coming out of one household," says Martin Kirkwood, the Pagoda's property manager. "The only thing that has happened to this building in the last four years, besides pigeons, is that it has degraded."

It doesn't help that Peskin recently introduced legislation that some activists believe would permit another theater to move into the Pagoda space - or nothing at all. Cynical residents are betting on the latter.

"If that legislation passes, Aaron Peskin's legacy will be an aviary," complained North Beach property owner Richard Hanlin, who has been active in the neighborhood opposition to the Telegraph Hill Dwellers' policies.

But Peskin insists it is all a misunderstanding. In fact, he says he had dinner with Campos recently.

"I told him, 'Hey, dude, I just want to get along,' " Peskin said. "In no way is this legislation aimed at the Pagoda Theater."

Why would Peskin say that if it weren't true?

"For as long as I have lived in the district," Jefferson said, "I haven't been able to figure out why Aaron says one thing and does another."

The real issue is that, for whatever reason, it is very difficult to open a new business in North Beach. Thy Nguyen, a single mother who mortgaged her house to get the funds to open a yogurt shop called Swirl Culture, ran into a wall of opposition.

"The Telegraph Hill Dwellers gave us a very hard time," Nguyen said. "I think the whole point was to just keep delaying and delaying until we ran out of money. I had no idea that one little group of people could control everybody."

Shanahan took a personal interest in the shop. She wrote a letter recommending that it be turned down because she said there were no families in North Beach to keep the shop in business, and that a bar would likely move in after the yogurt business failed.

Nguyen's plight seemed to galvanize the neighborhood. Jefferson, Garland and others joined together to support Nguyen, eventually winning approval from the Planning Commission.

"That was a huge victory," Jefferson said. "Maybe the reason was that the neighborhood came together to defy the process."

And this is the point when we're supposed to say that this victory is the beginning of a new activist movement in North Beach with the residents standing up to take back control of their neighborhood.

Dream on, Garland says.

"It was a fluke," she said. "Every one is a new fight. There are several projects in the works, and Peskin's legislation is aimed at squashing all of them."

Ask Alessandro Iacobelli, co-owner of Panta Rei restaurant. For 13 months, he and his partner have been paying rent on the tiny, 400-square-foot space next door. When the shoe repair shop folded, Iacobelli wanted to expand into that space.

"We thought we'd have it in two or three months, maybe open in the summer," he said. "Now it is the next summer. We're not complaining, but with so many other things that need to be done, why pick on a little shoe store?"

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/01/BAPN11HL7N.DTL

Reminiscence
Jul 3, 2008, 3:24 AM
Here is my update for July. I tried to add 535 Mission because it seems like it is close to beginning. Hopefully soon I can get to work on that one too.

http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/6567/sfdiagramza2.gif

Downtown Dave
Jul 3, 2008, 5:53 PM
Thanks, Mario. these diagrams really help put things in perspective. Hopefully we'll see some progress soon on the new additions.

peanut gallery
Jul 10, 2008, 7:17 PM
Thanks for the update, Rem! The footprint of 535 might be a little smaller than that and the height might end up being 400+, but it looks great on there. How about One Hawthorne or Trinity? Too small?

Reminiscence
Jul 10, 2008, 8:02 PM
Thanks, Mario. these diagrams really help put things in perspective. Hopefully we'll see some progress soon on the new additions.

Thanks for the update, Rem! The footprint of 535 might be a little smaller than that and the height might end up being 400+, but it looks great on there. How about One Hawthorne or Trinity? Too small?

Thanks guys! My guess is you are right and I'll have to fine tune it a bit once more details are known about it. As for One Hawthorne and Trinity, yes they are a tad to small since I am keeping this at 350'+. They are however, no less interesting :)

Reminiscence
Aug 2, 2008, 7:18 AM
Well, here comes August, and I guess the significant projects we have going are all topped out and almost fully glazed. I'm guessing Infinity will wrap up this month with the curtainwall and patch up things on the interior. One Rincon North Tower and 535 Mission should start seeing activity soon, while we continue to wait for others like 45 Lansing and 375 Fremont.

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/7674/sfdiagramiq8.gif

peanut gallery
Aug 6, 2008, 10:31 PM
According to CurbedSF, it looks like the condo/Whole Foods combo for the Haight is dead (http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2008/08/05/690_stanyan_survey_says_negative.php). A friend of mine lives there and was looking forward to this. I guess the empty parking lot will live on a few more years.

Is 690 Stanyan Street a dead man waking? Perhaps so, says the developer. The Whole Foods-pimped, Haight Ashbury Improvement Association-approved project, which would replace the now-defunct Cala Foods with 62 condos and a Whole Foods on ground level, has been met with staunch opposition by the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council. (Do we have a neighborhood brawl on our hands here? Oh yes, yes we do. How very North Beach of you, Haight!) Though he hasn't gone on record, Supe Ross Mirkarimi hasn't exactly supported the development. Neither has the city, which is reportedly dragging its feet on the environmental review process— the developer has languished in limbo for 2 and-a-half years at this point, and sees no end in sight as the Planning Commission hasn't even granted an initial approval hearing. The dev has spent over $1 million on the EIR, and has "little to show for it except a stack of heavy draft documents." Says a dejected Mark J. Brennan on behalf of 690 Stanyan St. LLC:

We're at best “50 - 50″ and that it is quite likely that this project is on its deathbed. The unreasonable delays in environmental review by the City are causing both the project sponsor and the proposed tenant, Whole Foods Market, to think seriously about whether it is all worth it.

peanut gallery
Aug 6, 2008, 10:32 PM
Thanks again, Rem. We really need some new projects to get going so you have more buildings to update every month.

Reminiscence
Aug 7, 2008, 3:21 AM
Thanks again, Rem. We really need some new projects to get going so you have more buildings to update every month.

My pleasure p.g. It looks like we might be heading into a bit of a dry spell, but we can always hope.

peanut gallery
Aug 7, 2008, 6:41 PM
Maybe that Haight Whole Foods will pop up in the Castro instead. From CurbedSF (http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2008/08/07/rumor_sort_of_confirmed_condos_for_market_and_dolores.php):


Rumor (sort of) Confirmed: Condos for Market and Dolores
Thursday, August 7, 2008, by Sarah Hromack

No wonder the Castro Safeway's hustling to overhaul its image: Word arrived in the Curbed Inbox that the now-vacant Ford dealership at Market and Castro Streets will most likely house 80 residential units atop 29,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. A tenant shall be announced imminently— according to our source, it'll most likely be a "food store" and a cafe. (We're thinking luxury grocery; Whole Foods is a rumored candidate, as is Trader Joes.) The project is said to have fallen in line with the Upper Market Community Design Plan (smart) which is set to go before the Planning Commission in the next couple of weeks.

Gordo
Aug 7, 2008, 6:53 PM
:previous: Hmmm, I wonder how much of that 29,000 would be used for the cafe? TJ's are usually only 10-12,000 or so, so it would seem that Whole Foods would be more likely.

fflint
Aug 8, 2008, 3:37 AM
Safeway isn't anywhere near as endangered by a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's at Market and Dolores as is the brand-new indie natural foods market just across Church St. from Safeway.

CHapp
Aug 8, 2008, 7:09 AM
Quoted by peanut gallery from CurbedSF:

Rumor (sort of) Confirmed: Condos for Market and Dolores
Thursday, August 7, 2008, by Sarah Hromack

No wonder the Castro Safeway's hustling to overhaul its image: Word arrived in the Curbed Inbox that the now-vacant Ford dealership at Market and Castro Streets will most likely house 80 residential units atop 29,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor.

It seems Safeway is overhauling its image not only in San Francisco. The three Berkeley - Berkeley/Albany - Berkeley/Oakland stores are also due for a major makeover, expanding sales floor size and offerings. As you can imagine, these plans are not exactly being met with great enthusiasm but the surrounding neighborhoods/shoppers. There is considerable opposition to the expansion plans of the Safeway on the Berkeley-Oakland border.

Gordo
Aug 8, 2008, 3:49 PM
:previous: Whoa! There's opposition to some type of change in Berkeley? Not sure I'm buying that...

;)

CHapp
Aug 8, 2008, 7:43 PM
rofl, Gordo!!! :haha:

Strange but true. :yes:

Cory
Aug 13, 2008, 5:27 AM
For being outside Southern California, San Francisco has an oversaturation of Trader Joe's. Although there is no guarantee about what is going in the Castro. There is a location about to open up outside San Francisco State. Also, supposedly there is a development happening at Balboa Park BART station, eventhough many do not see the room, near Ingleside that is suppose to house a Trader Joe's. Anyone have more info on that?

quashlo
Aug 13, 2008, 5:43 AM
http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2008/05/01/apb_theres_a_new_trader_joes_in_town.php

Appears to be the space currently occupied by the McDonald's at Stonestown.

pseudolus
Aug 13, 2008, 6:55 AM
For being outside Southern California, San Francisco has an oversaturation of Trader Joe's. Although there is no guarantee about what is going in the Castro. There is a location about to open up outside San Francisco State. Also, supposedly there is a development happening at Balboa Park BART station, eventhough many do not see the room, near Ingleside that is suppose to house a Trader Joe's. Anyone have more info on that?

The Ocean Avenue Kragen Auto site, just south of the reservoir.

WildCowboy
Aug 13, 2008, 7:18 AM
http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2008/05/01/apb_theres_a_new_trader_joes_in_town.php

Appears to be the space currently occupied by the McDonald's at Stonestown.

That McDonald's is only ~7,000 sf, which would be an awfully small TJ's. The former Copeland's makes more sense to me, as it's already vacant and is ~20,000 sf (5,000 on ground floor and 15,000 in basement). That's large for a TJ's, but the bi-level nature of the space no doubt would make it less efficient than a single floor plate.

Edit: Yeah, here's a Business Times article (http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/03/17/story4.html) from March mentioning that they're moving into the Copeland's space.

BTinSF
Aug 13, 2008, 9:31 AM
Maybe that Haight Whole Foods will pop up in the Castro instead. From CurbedSF (http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2008/08/07/rumor_sort_of_confirmed_condos_for_market_and_dolores.php):

Whole Foods may be lucky to survive--anywhere. It's demographic suddenly finds being frugal to be chic and shopping at "Whole Paycheck" no longer glamorous. Also, to quote yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is moving forward with plans to hold full administrative hearings on the 2007 merger between Whole Foods Market Inc. and Wild Oats Markets Inc.

The commission's plans, announced in an order released Friday, come two weeks after a federal appeals court revived the FTC's antitrust challenge to the $565 million transaction.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121850784416532229.html

Perhaps this explains their retrenchment in the Haight.

BTinSF
Aug 13, 2008, 9:33 AM
Quoted by peanut gallery from CurbedSF:



It seems Safeway is overhauling its image not only in San Francisco. The three Berkeley - Berkeley/Albany - Berkeley/Oakland stores are also due for a major makeover, expanding sales floor size and offerings. As you can imagine, these plans are not exactly being met with great enthusiasm but the surrounding neighborhoods/shoppers. There is considerable opposition to the expansion plans of the Safeway on the Berkeley-Oakland border.

This too is something Safeway is doing nationally. They completed the makeover at the stores where I shop near Tucson last winter and are doing the Market/Church store in SF now.

BTinSF
Aug 13, 2008, 9:35 AM
For being outside Southern California, San Francisco has an oversaturation of Trader Joe's. Although there is no guarantee about what is going in the Castro. There is a location about to open up outside San Francisco State. Also, supposedly there is a development happening at Balboa Park BART station, eventhough many do not see the room, near Ingleside that is suppose to house a Trader Joe's. Anyone have more info on that?

No but the planned TJ's at Sutter & Van Ness seems DOA, at least unless some new developer resurrects the project.

quashlo
Aug 13, 2008, 4:02 PM
That McDonald's is only ~7,000 sf, which would be an awfully small TJ's. The former Copeland's makes more sense to me, as it's already vacant and is ~20,000 sf (5,000 on ground floor and 15,000 in basement). That's large for a TJ's, but the bi-level nature of the space no doubt would make it less efficient than a single floor plate.

Edit: Yeah, here's a Business Times article (http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/03/17/story4.html) from March mentioning that they're moving into the Copeland's space.

Thanks for correcting that... I seriously haven't been over that aways in a long time.

The Ocean Avenue Kragen Auto site, just south of the reservoir.
Wasn't that supposed to be for the branch library? Or did they change the plan?

pseudolus
Aug 13, 2008, 5:31 PM
Wasn't that supposed to be for the branch library? Or did they change the plan?

The branch library is under construction at Plymouth and Ocean. It's a pretty small footprint.

CHapp
Aug 13, 2008, 7:43 PM
This too is something Safeway is doing nationally. They completed the makeover at the stores where I shop near Tucson last winter and are doing the Market/Church store in SF now.

Ah. Well, the standard exterior of Safeway stores surely can be improved, as could their merchandise. I can't even get any decent olive oil at my local Safeway. The plans for the stores I mentioned above, though, go well beyond that. The term "extreme makeover" comes to mind. So that's what Safeway plans to do to its stores nationwide? Hmmm ... they went so far as to get a former Assemblymember to play cheerleader for the Oakland/Berkeley project.

viewguysf
Aug 15, 2008, 5:50 AM
For being outside Southern California, San Francisco has an oversaturation of Trader Joe's. Although there is no guarantee about what is going in the Castro. There is a location about to open up outside San Francisco State.

I don't think so, bring 'em on! The ones that we have can get overly crowded so I don't think that there are too many here yet. The SF State location will be a big success, but it could diminish business at their Westlake Mall store in Daly City since it's just down Lake Merced Boulevard from the university.

BTinSF
Aug 15, 2008, 5:35 PM
This is more of a retail thing, but since we've been discussing it in this thread in the context of the Haight/Stanyan project:

Friday, August 15, 2008
Whole Foods to slow down its Nor Cal expansion plans
San Francisco Business Times - by Sarah Duxbury

In the wake of disappointing third quarter earnings, Whole Foods is feeding on more moderate growth.

The decision by the Austin, Texas, grocer to open 15 stores in 2009 — down from the 25 to 30 it had planned — could have repercussions in the Bay Area.

The company went on a lease-signing spree in the Bay Area in 2006 and 2007 as a rash of seemingly unmissable opportunities came to market.

While the near-term fate of 11 of the 13 Northern California locations for which Whole Foods has signed leases remains uncertain (Roseville will open in November; Santa Cruz will open the first quarter of 2009), David Lannon, president of Whole Foods’ Northern California region, said that the company remains committed to opening all of the stores. He said some opening dates will be delayed, however. Over the next three weeks, Lannon’s team will meet with landlords and developers of the 11 signed sites to find out if the projects are moving forward and when the sites will be delivered. Final decisions on where to move ahead and where to hold back will be made in Austin.

Two of the signed leases are in San Francisco — on Haight Street and in Noe Valley. The vagaries of the San Francisco city planning process and active neighborhood groups mean both projects are years off at best, by which time market conditions will likely improve.

Other leases seemed closer to reality when Whole Foods announced on Aug. 5 that it was putting on the brakes.

While the company declined to comment on timelines for any projects other than Roseville and Santa Cruz, calls to various city planning departments give a sense of where some of the other projects stand. Once approvals are in hand, a typical buildout takes six to nine months, Lannon said.

A second Mill Valley location, in a former Albertson’s on East Blithedale Avenue, could be open as early spring 2009, according to Rory Anne Walsh, community development director for Mill Valley. At a meeting last week, Whole Foods indicated that it would move forward with its remodel and would apply for building permits in a matter of weeks.
The Novato store won’t open before 2010. Construction on the site is under way and developer Signature Properties expects to turn the building over to Whole Foods in the third quarter of 2009.
The store planned for Stockton Avenue in San Jose could be open by late 2009, according to Mike Enderby, a senior planner with the city. Several months ago, Whole Foods decided to remove rooftop parking and scale down the 44,000-square-foot store by 10,000 square feet, in part to save money, Enderby said. He expects Whole Foods to file construction documents in the next few months and believes the company plans to open the store by the end of 2009.
A larger store on Blossom Hill Road in San Jose was approved in May 2008. Whole Foods has begun to demolish the existing structure on the site and has building permits.
Other Northern California leases are signed for stores in Albany, Capitola, Dublin, Lafayette and Santa Rosa.

One industry source estimates that Whole Foods has the capacity to build and staff three to four new Northern California stores a year. The current roster of leases suggests the company has a development pipeline of highly desirable locations pretty well full through 2012.

Knowing what and where it will be building could also help the company manage building costs and schedules.

Managing costs is paramount in the wake of disappointing third quarter earnings. Whole Foods announced that third quarter profit fell 31 percent to $33.9 million, or 24 cents a share, from $49.1 million, or 35 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts had expected the natural foods grocer to earn 31 cents a share or $1.9 billion for the quarter, according to a Thomson Reuters survey. Revenue rose 22 percent to $1.84 billion and same store sales climbed 2.6 percent.

Trimming costs and refocusing local operations has been Lannon’s focus since he became Northern California president six months ago. (He formerly was president of the New England region.) For Lannon, that means focusing on the food; returning to small, local producers and backing away from glitzy megastores like the 55,000-square-foot emporium Whole Foods opened last fall in Oakland and where, it seems to Lannon, there were more flat screen TVs than bulk food bins. If Lannon’s vision for future stores can be summed up, it’s more grain, less glitz. Where possible, it will also be smaller stores.

Of the 13 Northern California leases signed, seven are for stores under 40,000 square feet. Lannon sees the company’s sweet spot between 30,000 to 40,000 square feet. Smaller, less glitzy stores are also cheaper to build.

The company is also on a value offensive to retain budget-conscious consumers.

That means deeper discounts on sale items, better signs playing up promotions, store tours to highlight affordable items and clear signs that staples at Whole Foods are the same price as identical items at a Safeway or Trader Joe’s. It’s the premium items that Whole Foods also carries that Lannon believes give the store its undeserved reputation as an expensive place to shop.

Lannon is experimenting with new approaches to appeal to the Bay Area’s techno savviness, including launching promotions on Twitter and experimenting with social network sites like Facebook to engage customers.

Lannon is not concerned that current promotional efforts and “value” positioning could harm the brand once the economy picks up.

“Ultimately, it’s great if we appeal to a bigger percentage of the population,” he said. “We’re trying to make Whole Foods a bigger umbrella.”


sduxbury@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4963
Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/08/18/story13.html?t=printable

peanut gallery
Aug 15, 2008, 6:14 PM
I can say that Mill Valley could use another Whole Foods. The existing one is tiny.

BTinSF
Aug 19, 2008, 5:12 PM
Library selects familiar site for new North Beach branch
AUGUST 18, 11:54 PM

When it comes to sheer inhospitality, the Bermuda Triangle has nothing on the North Beach Triangle. That seemingly innocuous spit of land bounded by Columbus, Mason and Lombard was at the heart of a nasty land-use battle in 2003-04 that resulted in the city using its power of eminent domain to seize it, with a view toward making it a contiguous part of the North Beach/Joe DiMaggio Playground.

Now the triangle is back. San Francisco Public Library officials (with Rec and Park cheering them on) selected the old battleground as their preferred site for the new North Beach branch library. Representatives for both agencies defended the choice in front of a lively gathering of neighborhood activists, gadflies and most of the District 3 supervisorial candidates on Monday night at Sts. Peter and Paul Church.

The plan was met with the usual North Beach blend of exuberance, suspicion and hostility.

Jill Bourne, the deputy city librarian, said that while the triangle site was something of a compromise -- it's the best place for the library while Rec and Park proceeds with the simultaneous renovation of the adjoining playground -- the proposed two-story structure fulfills all the major needs for a state-of-the-art library.

The square footage of public space will increase dramatically, Bourne said, from the current 5,400 square feet to around 8,500 square feet. That will allow the library to designate specific areas for children, teens and adults, as well as providing space for a large community room. Keeping all the publicly-accessible facilities on the ground floor will also minimize staffing needs and save a little dough. Computer capacity will also increase and Wi-Fi capability will let the laptop crowd do their surfing among the stacks.

Another reason the triangle site makes sense, Bourne said, is that the current library can remain open and fully functional during construction. Seeing as how the financial ducks are not yet in a row, guaranteeing that there will be no disruption of library service is an important factor.

Putting the new library on the triangle would necessarily involve closing the short block of Mason Street between Lombard and Columbus, and that's where a lot of Monday night's opposition came from. Despite assurances from traffic consultant Jeff Tumlin that closing the street to connect the triangle to the park represented only "a mild redistribution of traffic," opponents (a few who live north of the park on Mason) were unconvinced.

Other opponents of the plan, who favor renovating the existing library and perhaps expanding into the adjoining children's playground, or "tot lot," argue that the cost of building an entirely new structure will be prohibitive and is fiscally imprudent. They also fear that the battle that's sure to erupt around the closing of Mason Street will only delay the project even further.

In any case, now that the site for a new branch library has been chosen, the process continues. Both the Library Commission and Rec and Park must officially approve the plan, after which it will be submitted for an environmental review. At that point, the architects (Leddy Maytum Stacy, in this case) begin their design work in earnest, although Marsha Maytum said Monday that they've already got a pretty good idea of where they're going, and they're excited by it.

That, for me, is the key. If Maytum's excitement is well founded -- and the twinkle in her eye suggested it might be -- then siting the library on that very prominent corner could be a master stroke. If the building turns out to be just another example of uninspired contemporary architecture, then we could have accomplished the same thing by giving Brian O'Flynn his stupid condominium project back in ought-four.

Along the way there will be opportunities for the public to continue weighing in. Despite one prediction that the EIR process shouldn't take more than a year to complete ("It's pretty simple," the guy said), I've lived here too long to buy that. Nothing is simple in San Francisco. We might all be dead before this new library is ever built, but at least our kids should be able to enjoy it.
Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-352-North-Beach-Examiner

and the Curbed take:


North Beach Opposes Library. No Kidding!

http://sf.curbed.com/uploads/2008_08_NB-triangle.jpg

The San Francisco Public Library has chosen the infamous "North Beach Triangle, the plot of land bounded by Columbus Avenue, Lombard Street, and Mason Street. Library. Yawn. Right? People, we're talking North Beach here— neighbors tend to be very protective of, well, everything. As one might expect then, choosing a site is quickly proving to be the most controversial stage of this project. The biggest complaint against the just-announced location seems to be the fact that building on the triangle would necessitate — gasp!— the permanent closure of Mason Street between Lombard and Columbus Avenue, a small strip of asphalt that local drivers apparently can't live without. Other opponents say the library is just too damn expensive and unnecessary. Local architecture firm Leddy Maytum Stacy will be designing both the the library and the renovation of the adjacent Joe DiMaggio Playground. Holding ...
Source: http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2008/08/19/north_beach_opposes_library_no_kidding.php#reader_comments

peanut gallery
Aug 21, 2008, 4:58 AM
Another possible bit of good news for the Tenderloin. From today's Chronicle (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/20/BA3J12E8RU.DTL):

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/08/19/ba-hibernia20_ph_0498984361.jpg
Long-vacant S.F. bank site draws interest
John Coté, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Roosting pigeons and vagrants drinking malt liquor may not be long for the landmark Hibernia Bank building, where prospective tenants hope to rehabilitate the shuttered Baroque-inspired edifice in San Francisco's Tenderloin.

David Jackson, executive director of the Bay Area Radio Museum, toured the building Tuesday with city officials, laying out his vision for a cultural arts center that would house music, sports and broadcasting museums, along with training facilities for dance, art and filmmaking.

Efforts to revitalize the distinctive building at the intersection of Jones and Market streets have stumbled in the past, though, often because of the owner's steep asking price for a property in an edgy neighborhood.

The Hibernia, with its soaring columns and domed entrance, has sat empty since 2000, when the San Francisco Police Department's Tenderloin Task Force left after nine years for a new $4.8 million station on Eddy Street, saying the Hibernia was ill-suited for police work and the rent too expensive.

That left the landmark to descend into a haven for public drinking, drug dealing and street urination four blocks from City Hall.

"That is an important part of the city," Jackson said, "and I saw a guy smoking crack out of another guy's shoe."

Last year, Mayor Gavin Newsom was considering the building as the site for the new Community Justice Center, which would prosecute misdemeanor and nonviolent felonies in the Tenderloin and South of Market, but decided on a Polk Street location.

"It would be fair to say cost was a factor," mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard said. "We ended up going with the better location for this particular project."

The Hibernia's owner, Thomas Lin Yun, leader of the Black Sect Tantric Buddhism temple in Berkeley, has the building on the market for $4 million, down from a nearly $10 million asking price in May 2007, said Benny Yee, a real estate broker for the potential buyers.

It would also cost roughly $18 million to make the building inhabitable, including seismic retrofitting, removing asbestos and lead paint, adding access for the disabled and ensuring proper fire escape routes, said Steve Van Someren, the radio museum's secretary and treasurer.

The radio museum, which currently exists as an online archive, is looking for a permanent home. It has joined with a group of broadcast and media associations, like the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club and the local chapter of the National Television Academy, to form a consortium dedicated to creating a broadcast and newspaper museum in the Bay Area, Jackson said.

The idea is for the 38,000-square-foot Hibernia site to house four museums - music, broadcasting, sports and newspapers - as well as community arts groups like the San Francisco Recovery Theater and Tenderloin TV, said Elaine Zamora, head of the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefits District.

"It's the best use for the building," said Zamora, whose group of property owners has already voiced opposition to the idea of putting a nightclub there. "It's an entryway into the neighborhood, an anchor for the neighborhood, and it's just a blighted piece of property that needs the right kind of tenant."

The catch, of course, is where the money will come from.

"My short answer is I don't know," Jackson said with a chuckle. "We've got people who are willing to fund this up to a point."

AndrewK
Aug 22, 2008, 5:18 PM
ive been hoping something would go in here for a long time, its such a beautiful building, and definitely doesnt deserve to be used as a toilet.