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Jerry of San Fran
Jun 13, 2009, 8:12 AM
Source: http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2009/06/2299_market_designs_for_the_castros_hole_in_the_ground.html#comments

Sorry, but I still don't expect to see anything built in that hole during my lifetime.
I agree that we may never see this hole filled. I have been in San Francisco since 1969 and cannot believe such a valuable piece of property has been left vacante for so long, but worse a deep hole in the heart of a community. This piece of property is important and would encourage commerce with it's neighbors. A christmas tree lot once a year is a poor use of the property. I have grown old since the church burned!

AndrewK
Jun 13, 2009, 7:10 PM
i think that 8 stories is a bit out of place on that corner, but if they had eliminated the 2nd and 3rd stories in that original rendering, i think it could have flown. a shame indeed.

peanut gallery
Jun 14, 2009, 4:32 AM
Does the original remind anyone else of Foundry Square?

peanut gallery
Jun 14, 2009, 6:32 PM
Jaime, of the Rincon Hill Neighborhood Blog (http://rinconhillneighbors.org/2009/06/planning-commission-approves-extensions/#more-2408), picked up an interesting tidbit from the latest planning commission meeting:

The Planning Commission did approve extensions on 340 Fremont, 399 Fremont, and 45 Lansing .. however, they’re conditioning the approval on keeping the lots in decent shape. The most visible hole in the ground’s (399 Fremont) owner is to come up with a plan in 30 days for a nicer looking fence and a plan to put some material over the ground similar to that at 535 Mission Street so that weeds and so on don’t clutter up and make it look so ugly when drivers come off the Bay Bridge on the Harrison Street exit ramp.

So be on the lookout for some action at Fremont and Harrison, but don't get your hopes up.

BTinSF
Jun 15, 2009, 10:03 PM
http://sf.curbed.com/uploads/2009_01_sfpuc.jpg
Source: http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2009/01/23/back_from_the_grave_sf_puc_ecopalace.php

Yesterday I noticed a drill rig sticking up from behind the fence at Golden Gate & Polk so today I walked over there and saw a beehive of activity involving our old friends Malcolm Drilling:

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x128/BSTJr/IMG_0220.jpg?t=1245103152

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x128/BSTJr/IMG_0224.jpg?t=1245103120

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x128/BSTJr/IMG_0226.jpg?t=1245103182

I managed to speak to one of the Malcolm workers and asked, rather bluntly, "Are they moving forward with the new building here?" The answer was, "Yes, we are doing the shoring for the foundation because it's deeper than the old building."

I could see not only the drilling activity but a dewatering tank of the sort that is used for foundation excavations.

Now I well remember when I asked a similar question of somebody at 535 Mission and got a similar answer--and then things stopped. So my fingers and toes are all crossed. But, hey, at least it appears clear we will NOT have a parking lot here.

peanut gallery
Jun 16, 2009, 1:02 AM
Yeah! Normally, I would say this being a public building would make the chance of another 535 slim. These days, who knows? Either way, this is promising.

peanut gallery
Jun 16, 2009, 10:54 PM
Not surprising, but the Redevelopment Agency is suspending the Block 8 RFP process to wait for better times. From The SF Business Times (http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/06/15/daily22.html):

S.F. suspends effort on Transbay District site
Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 2:46pm PDT
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen

The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency has suspended efforts to develop housing on a key Transbay District parcel after bids for the property came in “well below the potential value of the site in a healthier real estate market,” according to a memo from Executive Director Fred Blackwell.

Blackwell said the agency decided to suspend the request for proposals process for Block 8, a 42,600-square-foot parcel on Folsom Street between First and Fremont streets. The agency is looking for a developer to build two market-rate structures: a 550-foot residential tower and an adjacent 50-foot residential townhouse development. In addition, the RFP called for a 100 percent affordable building 65 to 85 feet.

“Staff believes that waiting a year and issuing a new RFP could potentially result in more interest from developers and higher purchase offers,” said Blackwell.

Blackwell said the agency will issue a new RFP in 2010.

Originally, three teams made bids on the property: AvalonBay and Bridge Housing; Golub Real Estate and Mercy Housing; and Avant Housing and Citizens Housing. The Avant/Citizens team, which had hired star architect Richard Meier Architecture to design the building, withdrew in April. AvalonBay is working with designer Arquitectonica and Chicago-based Golub is working with Solomon Cordwell Buentz. Both architects designed prominent buildings on Rincon Hill: Solomon Cordwell Buentz designed One Rincon Hill and Arquitectonica designed Tishman Speyer’s Infinity.

Blackwell said “the market has changed significantly since the RFP was issued in 2008.”

“For a prime development opportunity such as Block 8, the agency should wait for conditions to improve rather than sell under current market conditions.”

The agency did not release details of the two proposals that were submitted.

SFView
Jun 17, 2009, 6:28 PM
Without checking back on the many pages of all the San Francisco threads, here are a selection of renderings from Heller Manus we may not have seen posted exactly identicle to what we see here. Sorry, if there is anything repeated.

All images from www.hellermanus.com

555 Washington Street
http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/AERIAL%20RUSSIAN%20HILL.jpg


181 Fremont Street (Millennium Tower now visible - far left of top image)
http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/181%20Fremont_1.jpg

http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/181%20Fremont_2.jpg


Pine and Franklin (the 15 story tower will be at the site of an existing gas station along Van Ness Avenue - the 24 story tower will be on the Franklin Street side)
http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/Pine-Franklin-1.jpg

http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/Pine-Franklin-3.jpg

http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/Pine-Franklin-2.jpg


1415 Mission
http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/1415%20Mission_1.jpg

http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/1415%20Mission_2.jpg


10th & Market (a slightly different angle)
http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/03-20-07.jpg


340 Fremont Street
http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/340%20Fremont_1.jpg

http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/340%20Fremont_2.jpg

Gordo
Jun 17, 2009, 6:56 PM
Pine and Franklin (the 15 story tower will be at the site of an existing gas station along Van Ness Avenue - the 24 story tower will be on the Franklin Street side)
http://files.cosential.com/FirmFiles/25/images/Pine-Franklin-1.jpg

Isn't that the gas station to the right of the shorter building? It looks to me like the 24 story tower will be on the corner of Pine/Franklin and the 15 story tower will be mid-block on Pine. Am I not looking at it right?

Thanks for the pics, BTW. First I've seen of this rendering of the Pine/Franklin site. The last one that I saw for this site was for a single (much taller) slender building on a four or five story podium, but I remember there being significant whining from the neighborhood about it.

I don't think I've ever seen or heard anything about 1415 Mission. That would compliment the other new buildings across the street nicely.

metafizarc
Jun 17, 2009, 7:08 PM
AWESOME! thanks SFview...

SFView
Jun 17, 2009, 8:18 PM
Isn't that the gas station to the right of the shorter building? It looks to me like the 24 story tower will be on the corner of Pine/Franklin and the 15 story tower will be mid-block on Pine. Am I not looking at it right?

Oops. Sorry, yes I believe you are correct. The gas station still shows in the rendering.

BTW, you're welcome

BTinSF
Jun 17, 2009, 8:31 PM
I don't think I've ever seen or heard anything about 1415 Mission. That would compliment the other new buildings across the street nicely.

I posted an article about it when it was first proposed ( http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=4188489&postcount=2145 ). There are now nice buildings built or planned for 3 of the 4 corners of that intersection (only the southeast corner lacks a proposal).

Gordo
Jun 17, 2009, 8:33 PM
I posted an article about it when it was first proposed. There are now nice buildings built or planned for 3 of the 4 corners of that intersection (only the southeast corner lacks a proposal).

Actually, now that you mention it, I do remember you posting that and the discussion about three of the four corners getting new digs.

peanut gallery
Jun 17, 2009, 8:36 PM
Thanks for the reminder. This rendering looks so different from what we saw before I didn't make the connection either. Thanks for finding and posting these, SFView. Great stuff!

Gordo
Jun 17, 2009, 8:48 PM
I really like that rendering for 1415 Mission. Evokes a bit of Trinity Place going up further down the street, but with balconies (Nativeguy1964 will be jealous ;)).

I like the buildings on Pine too, even though they don't look to stand out much. I think those fit in better with that area than the past tower proposal did.

peanut gallery
Jun 17, 2009, 10:52 PM
1415 evokes a bit of Avalon as well. I think Heller Manus has been influenced by their work with Arquitectonica.

BTinSF
Jun 18, 2009, 12:20 AM
I really like that rendering for 1415 Mission. Evokes a bit of Trinity Place going up further down the street, but with balconies (Nativeguy1964 will be jealous ;)).

I like the buildings on Pine too, even though they don't look to stand out much. I think those fit in better with that area than the past tower proposal did.

I expect quite a bit of "value engineering" on 1415 Mission such that the reality doesn't look quite as good as the rendering . . . but, we'll see.

As an aside, pile driving the last 2 days and Golden Gate/Polk. I assume they are driving the angle iron that holds the shoring timbers for the perimeter of the foundation.

BTinSF
Jun 19, 2009, 12:11 AM
More from 525 Golden Gate:

They appear to be nearly done driving I-beams around the perimeter. I'm sure they will then drop timbers between them to form the retaining wall for the foundation as they dig it.

This brings up a question. I have seen or heard of buildings being stopped at all stages of construction, due to unforeseen circumstances, including after the foundation has been dug but before any actual construction was begun, but I am not aware of any building digging the foundation without the intention of proceeding to construction at the time that was done. In other words, is there any reason to think this work doesn't mean the city has every intention of proceeding with construction at this point it time? Would they do this if the funding was still in doubt? I thought they planned to stop after demolition of the old building if that were the case.

Anyway, here are today's pics:

Note the line of I-beams along the Golden Gate side of the foundation perimeter--leading to the pile driver which still has a few to do
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x128/BSTJr/IMG_0231.jpg?t=1245369978

The site from midblock on Polk
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x128/BSTJr/IMG_0232.jpg?t=1245370123

Note the finished I-beam perimeter along the alley side of the site
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x128/BSTJr/IMG_0237.jpg?t=1245370180

Ready to dig
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x128/BSTJr/IMG_0239.jpg?t=1245370262

peanut gallery
Jun 19, 2009, 1:22 AM
Nice update, BT. Since this needs to go deeper than the previous foundation, will they demo the old one? I can see a portion of it in your 3rd shot on the outside of the I-beams. That leads me to wonder if they'll leave it in place since it seems like the I-beams would make it difficult to remove.

If I understand your question, I think this means they have every intention to complete the building or they wouldn't bother with the excavation work. But I don't know if that means anything, really. I'm sure 535 had every intention of completing the building but that didn't stop them from putting it on hold after the piles were driven.

peanut gallery
Jun 19, 2009, 1:23 AM
double post.

BTinSF
Jun 19, 2009, 2:48 AM
@pg: Yeah, 535 stopped because between when they started digging and when they finished, the economy crashed and it was a "spec" building--meaning probably no tenants and perhaps no construction funding. But as you pointed out, this is a city project. Once funding is in place, it isn't likely to go away so the real question is whether it's in place. Back in January the BizTimes reported the PUC expected to hear if they were going to get any "stimulus" money for it "in about a month". Well, of course, it's now 5 months later, so I want to assume they've heard and the activity means they got enough money. But I'd feel a lot better about it if I could verify that.

You may be able to tell this building means more to me than most. It's a block from where I live--an ugly, rather derelict block (the worst in the area). The old state building, now gone, was its worst but not its only eyesore. The new PUC building would be a real plus.

peanut gallery
Jun 19, 2009, 4:57 AM
Ah, now I see the distinction you're making. I tend to think they must have the funding, but can only guess. I'm glad you live nearby so we'll get regular updates. It's slim pickens around me until they demo Transbay. And we're still a few years away from actual construction.

BTinSF
Jun 19, 2009, 5:35 PM
Friday, June 19, 2009
S.F. in talks for Moscone expansion
TMG owns key property
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen

The San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau is in preliminary talks with developers about expanding the Moscone Convention Center to a property at 680 Folsom St.

The public-private partnership would include a 150,000-square-foot expansion of the Moscone Center, as well as housing, hotel or office development.

While city officials are not ready to discuss the project in detail, officials involved in the discussions say the new below-ground convention center space would connect with the 650,000-square- foot Moscone Center South underground across Third Street. The complex would replace two existing office buildings owned by developer TMG Partners and financial partner RREEF, 680 Folsom St. and 50 Hawthorne St., as well as the Moscone Parking Garage at 255 Third St. In addition to the convention center and replacement parking, the new project could feature “two or three towers” above a podium.

The potential deal is important for the health of San Francisco’s $8.5 billion hospitality industry, the city’s largest employer, which is closely tied to the convention center. In recent years, officials have worried that San Francisco has lost conventions to other cities, including Las Vegas, that could accommodate larger groups. OracleWorld, which drew 43,000 attendees last year, is so crammed for space that in recent years the city has shut down a section of Howard Street to create more exhibit space. In 2007, officials briefly mulled expanding the convention center into the adjacent Metreon, but the idea never got off the ground.

Michael Cohen, San Francisco’s economic development director, characterized the talks with TMG as “an exploration at this point.” He said the city is looking at the TMG/RREEF site as part of a “focused planning effort on finishing the Third Street corridor and the Yerba Buena area.” The other two Third Street projects the city is looking at are Millennium Partner’s 706 Mission St., which is slated for condos, and a new Mexican Museum. Additionally, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s plans to expand exhibit space onto land it owns behind the current museum.

“There is an opportunity for TMG to help us solve a significant issue, which is the need to expand the Moscone Center,” said Cohen. “The reality with the convention center is that demand far outstrips supply and any expansion we can accomplish by leveraging private investment is going to be welcome.”

TMG Partners declined to comment. One executive with the firm emphasized that discussions are “extremely conceptual.” Through a spokeswoman, Convention & Visitors Bureau CEO Joe D’Alessandro also declined to be interviewed for this story.

RREEF and TMG Partners bought the vacant former AT&T complex at Folsom and Third streets in 2007 and hired Craig Hartman of Skidmore Owings & Merrill to design a $200 million renovation of the existing building. The plan — which included a new glass curtain wall skin and a glass, steel and granite lobby with 30-foot ceilings — won planning commission approval right before the recession. Like other significant development projects across the city, it has since been on hold.

Cohen said it made sense to undertake a planning effort focused on the three crucial Third Street sites at a time when the capital markets are frozen and developers are waiting for the economy to bottom.

“As a general matter, we do believe there is an opportunity to do good, large-scale planning in San Francisco and create entitlements that can be realized when the economy begins to pick up,” he said.

The expansion of the convention center could be partially funded through the new San Francisco Tourism Improvement District. Under a special tax district, guests at hotels closest to the convention center pay a 1.5 percent tax, while customers at hotels further away pay 1 percent. The tax is expected to generate $10.5 million in the first year, some of which will be used to study and plan the Moscone expansion. The tax was expected to generate more money, but both average room rates and occupancy rates are down. The average room rate in April of 2009 was $154.56, down from $187.87 a year ago. Occupancy declined from 78.1 percent to 74.1 percent over the same period.

Hotel consultant Rick Swig called the possibility of an expanded Moscone at 680 Folsom St. “a phenomenal opportunity for the city.”

“The combination of the legacy Moscone and Moscone West are still too small to allow San Francisco to compete for major conventions in the future. Expansion is a requirement and a necessity.”

Out of all the possible places to expand, the Folsom and Third property makes the most sense, he said.

“The big issue here is that the Moscone Center will have to expand at some point and looking at a remote site anywhere is nowhere comparable to something contiguous to the current convention center,” said Swig.

San Francisco Marriott General Manager Dan Kelleher, who heads a CVB committee on Moscone expansion, said “there are a lot of different options flying around and not one has been nailed down specifically at this point.”

Email J.K. Dineen at jkdineen@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4971
Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/06/22/story1.html?t=printable

680/690 Folsom
http://www.socketsite.com/690%20Folsom%20Now.jpg
Source: http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2009/06/680690_folsom_from_renovation_to_potentially_razed.html

BTinSF
Jun 19, 2009, 7:23 PM
I'm glad you live nearby so we'll get regular updates.

Until October--then I hope somebody else takes over for the winter. ;)

peanut gallery
Jun 19, 2009, 7:47 PM
^I'll enjoy it while it lasts. :)

On 680 Folsom, I can see where expanding Moscone is needed. But if renovating an existing building doesn't make economic sense, how does building multiple brand new towers pencil out? Also, I'm surprised they're even thinking about removing the parking garage. Even though it doesn't seem to fill up very often, I don't see how they can build enough underground parking to replace it. I would have assumed the Convention Bureau would be against it.

coyotetrickster
Jun 21, 2009, 4:17 PM
^I'll enjoy it while it lasts. :)

On 680 Folsom, I can see where expanding Moscone is needed. But if renovating an existing building doesn't make economic sense, how does building multiple brand new towers pencil out? Also, I'm surprised they're even thinking about removing the parking garage. Even though it doesn't seem to fill up very often, I don't see how they can build enough underground parking to replace it. I would have assumed the Convention Bureau would be against it.

You know the old saying about assuming. If you don't, I'm not starting a flamewar, but.... The convention bureau could give a flying rat's ass about parking if the price is an expanded Moscone Center. Parking is a secondary revenue stream to the convention attendees and the associated spending. The SFVCB doesn't really see income from the parking garages, anyway. Most conventioneers attending an event are staying in nearby hotels. That could be enhanced by adding a hotel tower as part of the deal (one of those building podiums. You could even put in above-ground parking decks in one of the buildings. The loss of parking by demolishing a garage is so not a deal breaker here.

Second, the cost of TMG's planned renovation of 680 is dictated primarily by the number of units it can get into the existing mid-rise shell, plus the price of market rate housing. That latter is definitely not a good thing at the moment. That property is on the periphery of the redevelopment agency's control and could be up-zoned for much higher density that what is there at present. TMG would be paid market price under the threat of eminent domain, most likely with an option to develop a new tower/towers. It could be sweetened with the offer of credit on the back end (once built and producing revenue streams) to recoup what ever loss was incurred on the price difference between what they paid for 680 and what the city paid for the property for a Moscone expansion. In the meantime, the investment partners can shelter income from the loss incurred as a result of the 'condemnation' and/or sale.

Finally, there will be a subway stop with entrances near that block. As part of the city's transit first policy, any developers of the tower(s) will probably be able to squeeze additional densities beyond those already permitted by the SFRA's control. There you have how this would 'pencil out.'

viewguysf
Jun 21, 2009, 5:39 PM
...The convention bureau could give a flying rat's ass about parking if the price is an expanded Moscone Center. Parking is a secondary revenue stream to the convention attendees and the associated spending. The SFVCB doesn't really see income from the parking garages, anyway. Most conventioneers attending an event are staying in nearby hotels. That could be enhanced by adding a hotel tower as part of the deal (one of those building podiums. You could even put in above-ground parking decks in one of the buildings. The loss of parking by demolishing a garage is so not a deal breaker here.

I think that you are totally correct--parking garages are not a primary or even secondary concern of the SFCVB or Moscone Center management. I've always thought that the parking garage in question is a blatant eyesore anyway and would be happy to see it bite the dust. It's too bad that the hideous Convention Center Plaza or whatever they're calling the concrete bunker of a midrise at the corner of Harrison and Fourth isn't being included in the expansion proposal. Its demise would also significantly improve the area aesthetically.

peanut gallery
Jun 22, 2009, 7:29 PM
Yeah, i know the saying and I'm not afraid to make an ass of myself. :) That's why that whole post was intended to be framed as a question. I know I don't know the rationale behind it. Thanks for the detailed answer, coyotetrickster.

BTinSF
Jun 24, 2009, 2:54 AM
Eastern Neighborhoods Plan In Action (As Proposed): 750 2nd Street

http://www.socketsite.com/750%202nd%20Street.jpg

As the one-story-with-mezzanine, 25-foot high former warehouse at 750 2nd Street looks today above. As is proposed to replace the existing warehouse with an eight-story plus mezzanine, 95-foot mixed-use building under the new Eastern Neighborhoods Plan below.

http://www.socketsite.com/750%202nd%20Street%20-%20proposed.jpg

The proposed building would include up to 17 residential units (28,950 gsf), above a ground‐floor commercial space, and a ground‐floor garage with approximately 16 off-street parking spaces with stackers (4,487 gsf) for residents. Additionally, the project would provide approximately 2,891 gsf of private open space in the form of decks or balconies attached to 13 of the residential units.

http://www.socketsite.com/750%202nd%20Street%20-%20proposed%202.jpg

The project site is within the East SoMa Plan Area and under the recently adopted Eastern Neighborhood (EN) controls, project approval would proceed under Section 329, Large Project Authorization in Eastern Neighborhoods Mixed-Used Districts. The proposed project would require exceptions to certain requirements in the Mixed Use-Office (MUO) district, and to certain pre-existing zoning controls [formerly zoned M-2].
Design by Gould Evans Baum Thornley Architects. And targeting, at a minimum, LEED Silver certification.
Source: http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2009/06/750_2nd_street_eastern_neighborhoods_plan_in_action_as.html

^^^Makes me wonder how MoMo's could be around much longer. That prime corner lot would seem awfully underutilized with this next door.

Gordo
Jun 24, 2009, 3:53 AM
I've always thought that corner would be a great place for a taller building with MoMo's on top as a rooftop bar/restaurant. :)

Kingofthehill
Jun 24, 2009, 4:10 AM
Hey everybody, I stumbled upon one of my flickr contact's work of SF from the 60's/80's/90's...definitely worth a look:

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/daveglass/sets/72057594064354166/

Lots of great b/w's, shots of the "urban renewal" in the Filmore/Western Addition, grit, multiculturalism, blah blah, etc.

peanut gallery
Jun 24, 2009, 4:12 PM
Wow, KOTH, those are fascinating. I especially loved the series on the Carmel Fallon Building and seeing how it changed at various times over the years. Plus all the house mover shots. That pre-Marriott, pre-YB-gardens shot of Mission is really cool too. Thanks for posting that link!


I've always thought that corner would be a great place for a taller building with MoMo's on top as a rooftop bar/restaurant. :)

Excellent idea!

Jerry of San Fran
Jun 24, 2009, 7:11 PM
King of the Hill - nice link to Flickr.

I'm glad that the Carmel Fallon Building was not painted lavender! I hate lavender!

AndrewK
Jun 24, 2009, 9:12 PM
what i wonder is, what happened to all those houses they "moved" from the western addition?

BTinSF
Jun 25, 2009, 2:28 AM
what i wonder is, what happened to all those houses they "moved" from the western addition?

You can see a couple of them if you drive north on Webster and look to the right as you approach Geary (opposite side of the street from Safeway). I recall when those were "relocated" there. Even wondered if it would make sense to buy one--they were something of a bargain.

BTinSF
Jun 25, 2009, 2:32 AM
870 Harrison Update: Development Unanimously Approved

http://www.socketsite.com/870%20Harrison.jpg

It’s a plugged-in tipster that notes the development of 870 Harrison Street by JS Sullivan was unanimously approved last week. Design by Leavitt Architecture, as rendered by ZŪM:

http://www.socketsite.com/870%20Harrison%20Rendering.jpg

As previously summarized by us:

Twenty-six residential units (18 one-bedroom, 8 two-bedroom) over either 4,050 or 2,560 square feet of ground-floor PDR (Planning Commissions Resolution 17707 "allows for reduced PDR replacement requirements if 25 percent of the lot depth is dedicated to an at-grade rear yard") and a below grade garage with 12 residential spaces, one commercial space, one van-accessible space, two car share spaces, and eight spaces for bikes.
And there's animation to come (we’re told).


Source: http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2009/06/870_harrison_update_development_unanimously_approved.html

Whole lotta infill seems happening in SOMA--almost like the "live-work loft" days of 1999.

peanut gallery
Jun 25, 2009, 2:33 AM
The design is pretty bland, but I like the infill happening and proposed for this area.

BTinSF
Jun 25, 2009, 6:33 AM
:previous: As someone put it on Socketsite, most buildings in most cities are ugly. This one sure won't win any beauty contests. But it's especially hard to do so for mid-block, midrise housing. For economic reasons, they have to use all the footprint they can and they have to anticipate new construction on either side (meaning cosmetics will matter someday only on the side facing the street). Given all that, to my eye it's OK--just OK.

cityjogger
Jun 26, 2009, 3:29 PM
I noticed this morning that 4th street is now open at Channel, but it's still not open all the way through to UCSF (it's still blocked just south of the new apartment building).

BTinSF
Jun 26, 2009, 4:45 PM
Friday, June 26, 2009
Real estate slump threatens projects
Falling land values imperil public-private development deals
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen

Plummeting land values and the deep recession have taken a toll on one of San Francisco’s central business models for urban redevelopment: public-private development deals.

With many developers predicting that highrise development of any sort won’t work economically for another five years, public agencies are struggling with a development model in which private builders pay for the right to develop valuable land and, in the process, bankroll public benefits like parks, roads and affordable housing.

Until the capital markets are willing to invest in the next generation of highrise condos, hotels or office buildings, public entities like the Port of San Francisco and the city Redevelopment Agency are stuck with prime land that has little or no current value.

The challenges came into focus last week when the Redevelopment Agency canceled the request for proposals process for one of its most promising projects, a housing complex slated for First and Folsom streets in the Transbay district, “because bids came in well below the potential value of the site in a healthier real estate market,” according to Fred Blackwell, the agency’s executive director.

Surprise to developers

The decision to suspend the RFP process on Block 8, a parcel entitled for a 550-foot condo tower and some affordable housing, was an unpleasant surprise to the two development teams that had spent a year working on their proposals. The site had originally attracted a dozen developers but by June 10 when second-round proposals were due, the field had been whittled to two contenders — AvalonBay and Golub Development of Chicago.

The lead architect on the Golub team, Solomon Cordwell Buenz Vice President Chris Pemberton, said he was “shocked” that the Redevelopment Agency pulled the plug on the process. He said his team followed the RFP process precisely and the agency should have made it clear if there was a minimum price for the land.

“To cancel it without even entering into negotiations was a shock,” said Pemberton. “We are reeling. We spent a fortune on it. If they had a minimum number in mind, we should have had it and we could have figured out in a few days work if it would pencil.”

AvalonBay Development Director Meg Spriggs said they were “disappointed about the suspension of the Block 8 RFP.” She said, “unfortunately, the reality of the real estate market we are in today is that it puts significant pressure on land valuations.”

“This has been a tough decision for everyone to hear. However, the agency does deserve credit for trying to think creatively about potential deal structures. Today’s fundamentals just didn’t allow them to hear what they were hoping to hear,” said Spriggs.

Blackwell said the financial and design details of the two Block 8 bids would remain confidential, a move both teams said they appreciate. He said the delay is “unfortunately part of the risks of investing in pre-development.”

“We actually feel very bad about it — it is never good to have to put a project on hold when you have folks who have invested significant money and time. The decision to delay is not one we take lightly,” he said.

Numerous projects may struggle

Today’s depressed land values could emerge as a sticking point in a number of projects, including the two seawall lots the Port of San Francisco is attempting to develop. For Seawall Lot 351, at Drumm and Washington streets, the port attracted just one proposal, from Pacific Waterfront Partners, despite issuing two rounds of solicitations. On an even bigger project, Seawall Lot 337, just across the Lefty O’Doul Bridge from AT&T Park, the Port Commission is in exclusive negotiations with a team of developers that includes Wilson Meany Sullivan and the San Francisco Giants. Negotiations are ongoing in both deals and terms have not been reached.

The plunge in prices could also complicate the latest attempt to redevelop Pier 70. The port plans to put out an RFP soon for the project, which could total up to 2.5 million square feet and cost nearly $2 billion, according to Jonathan Stern, head of waterfront development for the port.

“It’s a bit scary to do it in this environment,” he said, “but we think it’s the right time.”

He pointed out that one of the port’s most successful developments, the conversion of Piers 1½, 3 and 5 into high-end office space, was planned during the darkest days of the dot-com crash.

“If you move ahead when times are bad, there can be a huge payoff on the other end.”

Blackwell said agencies like the port and his own have a tough balancing act during down economy. “We are charged with moving projects forward, but we also have to be diligent in terms of what we accept in terms of land value,” said Blackwell. “Our responsibility is not only to budget but to steward resources.”

Blackwell said the agency is trying to streamline the development process and “be as responsive and flexible and diligent as possible so we don’t add an additional burden in an already tough climate.” In addition, the agency is doing more to go after state and federal stimulus money for so-called shovel-ready projects.

Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, said cities can solve the public-private challenge by demanding less money up front and instead spreading payments over a longer period of time.

“Public agencies are going to face the decision of whether to go to market now or wait,” said Metcalf. “There is a lot of benefit to moving projects forward more quickly, but you have to weigh that against if you can get a significantly better deal by waiting a little while.”

Architect Jeffrey Heller, who has been active in San Francisco development for 30 years, said large public-private developments have frequently gone through several iterations as the economy rises and falls. He pointed to Yerba Buena Center, which broke Canadian developer Olympia & York walked away from in the 1990s after spending $28 million.

“There is just no way to move these large redevelopment projects ahead any faster,” said Heller. “There is a lot of suffering along the way.”


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


Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/06/29/story1.html?t=printable

BTinSF
Jun 26, 2009, 4:55 PM
Friday, June 26, 2009
New office projects won’t pencil for many years
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen

When Beacon Capital Partners abruptly halted construction on a 293,000-square-foot office tower at 535 Mission St. last October, it did more than kill a $100 million job for Turner Construction.

It signaled the end of highrise office development in downtown San Francisco for the foreseeable future.

With Class A office rents down 25 percent and the vacancy rate above 16 percent and rising, San Francisco may not see another office tower completed until 2014. And some industry players think the wait could be even longer.

Office developers tend to take the plunge when single-digit vacancy rates trigger a rent spike, or when building values rise above replacement costs. That happened briefly in 2007. It is difficult to gauge how far values of office towers have fallen since then because so few have changed hands, but most brokers and owners estimate values have dropped by at least 50 percent. Recent bids on 250 Montgomery — a well-located but unspectacular building — came in well below $200 a square foot. That is less than half the $400 a square foot Lincoln Property Co. paid for it and a third of the $600 a square foot it would cost to replace it.

A gulf of that size illustrates why investors are entirely focused on existing bargains rather than on risky development.

“If you have dry powder you are going to allocate those dollars to acquisitions rather than development,” said Greg Fogg of Jones Lang LaSalle.

A new report from Grubb & Ellis projects that the vacancy rate will hit 17.9 percent this year before peaking in 2010 at 19.4 percent. For office developers, the combination of weak demand, low rents and falling values could make for a long drought.

“My guess would be we are three to five years away from a major new office development breaking ground,” said developer Jack Myers, who opened 101 Second St. and 55 Second St. in 1999.

Mark Geisreiter, executive vice president at Grubb & Ellis, said he doesn’t see any new spec development until “well into the next cycle.”

“The fundamentals have to be there. The confidence has to be there. And for a spec building, the financing has to be there. And I don’t see the lender community, after getting pummeled in 2009, 2010, and 2011, saying ‘oh yeah we’re going to lend on a spec building.’ There is going to have to be pre-leasing,” said Geisreiter.

Only one new highrise

For advocates of downtown development, the dearth of new projects is particularly disappointing when you consider that just one new downtown office tower was completed in the three-year upswing that ended in early 2008. And that building, Tishman Speyer’s 555 Mission St., is less than 50 percent leased. Two other speculative projects in Mission Bay — the 300,000-square-foot 500 Terry Francois and the 175,000-square-foot addition at 185 Berry St. — are also empty.

Chris Roeder of Jones Lang LaSalle points out that Tishman executives were seen as “geniuses’ when they decided to go spec and quickly landed three major tenants in DLA Piper, Sequoia Capital and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Since then, however, leasing has ground to a halt.

“The problem was that the up cycle didn’t last as long as they had hoped,” said Roeder.

Besides 535 Mission St., another entitled project that never got off the ground was Lincoln Property Co.’s 350 Bush St. and 500 Pine St. Lincoln had pulled permits to break ground when the recession hit.

Good timing

One development that did time the market well was Pacific Waterfront Partners’ Piers 1 ½, 3, and 5, a 70,000-square-foot rehab project. Pacific President Simon Snellgrove said they took gamble that the waterfront location would attract tenants willing to pay top dollar. It worked, and several tenants paid $70 per square foot triple net to get into the building.

“We got into the sweet spot,” said Snellgrove.

CalSTRS, the California State Teachers Retirement System, was Pacific Waterfront’s financial partner on the Piers. Snellgrove said its unclear whether pension funds, which have been a major investor in real estate since the late 1980s, will still have the appetite for new office construction. Many pension funds have lost vast sums on real estate during the recession.

“The open question is: Will they default to lower risk, lower return and get out of the development business altogether? And, if they do, what are the sources of capital that are going to replace that?” said Snellgrove.

And then there is the cost of development in San Francisco. Myers said he recently looked at a site slated for a 425,000-square-foot tower in San Francisco. Crunching the numbers, he was struck by how city fees have skyrocketed since he completed his last building. When he tallied the fees — a school impact fee, a jobs/housing linkage fee, a transit impact fee and others — it came to $21 million. The fees were five times what they had been when Myers completed 101 Second St. in 1999.

“It was shocking,” said Myers. “I sent our team back to look at the numbers again because I thought they had made a mistake.”

The bounce back

But amid the doom and gloom, brokers point out that the San Francisco office market as historically recovered quickly. After the market peaked at 22 percent vacancy rate in 2002 during the dot-com crash, “nobody ever expected that by 2006 we would be at less than 10 percent vacancy,” said Jones Lang LaSalle Managing Director Wes Powell.

“When the economy is on its feet, the Bay Area and San Francisco move very fast and can take up a lot of space in a short period of time.”

jkdineen@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4971
Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/06/29/focus4.html

peanut gallery
Jun 26, 2009, 5:22 PM
I had forgotten about Pier 70. That seems especially tough in this environment given the requirements to keep historic structures and support the ship repair business, while trying to make a profit on whatever new development goes in (not to mention that it's not as good a location as the other two properties mentioned). Plus, I'd guess there will be some clean-up required. Does the developer have to cover that too? Seems rather challenging for that one to generate much for the Port.

nequidnimis
Jun 29, 2009, 11:08 PM
The $600 sq. ft. cost to replace seems fishy. According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Tower_(San_Francisco) the 1,150,000 sq. ft. Millennium Tower cost $350M to build - which works out $304 psf. That was at the height of the real estate cycle, when construction prices were significantly higher than they are now.

BTinSF
Jun 29, 2009, 11:15 PM
:previous: I suspect the cost of residential construction (Millenium) may be a lot cheaper than office. Certainly you get more floors per foot of total height with residential (each floor is about 10 ft for residential, more like 13 for office). But for office you also need a good deal more infrastructure to support heating, cooling, power needs of equipment, elevator capacity and so on.

nequidnimis
Jun 30, 2009, 12:59 AM
Yes, but bear in mind that residential construction is delivered fully finished, with partitions, doors, lights, kitchens, bathrooms, while commercial construction is delivered as a series of empty floor plates to which tenants must make their own improvements.

viewguysf
Jun 30, 2009, 4:27 AM
Yes, but bear in mind that residential construction is delivered fully finished, with partitions, doors, lights, kitchens, bathrooms, while commercial construction is delivered as a series of empty floor plates to which tenants must make their own improvements.

The Millennium penthouses are being delivered as unfinished open space though, just like the St. Regis Museum Tower was.

BTinSF
Jul 4, 2009, 2:46 AM
Friday, July 3, 2009
Urban housing firms grab $150M in grants
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen

http://assets.bizjournals.com/story_image/253336-600-0-1.jpg

Bay Area developers have raked in more than $150 million in state grant money to jump start housing projects, a list of big winners that included the John Stewart Co., the Emerald Fund, Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp., and a development group that includes former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana.

After a 12-hour marathon meeting June 20th Sacramento that drew hopeful housing builders from across California, the state’s Local Assistance Loan and Grant Committee handed out money set aside for urban infill housing development under Proposition 1C, a $2.8 billion bond measure California voters approved in 2006. The money allocated on Monday represents the last round of Prop 1C grants and includes money for infill infrastructure as well as transit oriented housing construction. The state was scheduled to announce the official grant winners today.

In total San Francisco developers won seven state grants worth $96 million, according to Craig Adelman, deputy director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing. In contrast, during the last round San Francisco developers won just one grant for $5 million. Adelman credited Kyri McClellan of the mayor’s economic development staff, for coordinating the city applications.

“It was huge,” said Adelman. “We hit this very hard and very early in terms of coordinating across city agencies and with our development partners.”

The biggest Bay Area recipient was the John Stewart Co., which received the maximum $30 million to help bankroll the ambitious 750-unit mixed-income housing development called Hunters View, a project that includes the rebuilding of a 267-unit dilapidated public housing complex. The money will pay for everything from grading to utilities to a new street grid. Work will start early next year on the $300 million development, which will be built in phases.

“It’s the whole underpinning for redevelopment,” said Jack Gardner, president of the John Stewart Co. “This was the key piece of money we were relying on. We needed it to happen and it did.”

The Hunters View grant was the first state grant for San Francisco’s Hope SF program, the city’s effort to rebuild rundown public housing developments by joining with market-rate developers and increasing density.

“It was a big day for San Francisco, for Hope SF, and for the Hunters View residents in particular. A lot of the city’s housing pipeline is going to get catalytic funding.”

The Emerald Fund, which is raising money to build 308 units of rental housing in Rincon Hill, received $11 million, much of which will go toward a park the developer agreed to build. The developer did not receive another $11 million transit-oriented development Prop 1C grant it had applied for, but Emerald Fund President Oz Erickson said he is hopeful that money will come through after a 90 day evaluation period. Erickson said that they have a strong case for the public benefits 333 Harrison will provide.

“Remember this is a project that includes 62 units of deeply affordable housing for which our out of pocket costs are $21 million. And we are providing a park — our costs for the park are $9 million.”

Emerald could also receive federal stimulus money for 333 Harrison. The project was one of just a handful of private-sector stimulus requests recommended by Bay Area official to state authorities who will distribute much of California’s share.

One San Francisco developer that was not selected for a 1C grant is Avant Housing, a joint venture between AGI Capital and TMG Partners. Avant Housing officials had hoped to receive $5.7 million for a 194-unit complex at 1880 Mission St.

“It was one piece of financing that would have made the puzzle less difficult to put together, but there are a lot of pieces of this puzzle,” said Eric Tao, a executive vice president with AGI.

jkdineen@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4971
Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/07/06/story4.html

peanut gallery
Jul 5, 2009, 2:38 AM
We've discussed 333 Harrison before. I know Jaime from the Rincon Hill Neighborhood blog will be happy to see the park go in.

I don't recall if anyone ever mentioned 220 Golden Gate before. As a refresher, here is the plan for this great looking building from a 2007 article in the Chronicle: (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/10/BUGSLQTGTV1.DTL)

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2007/07/10/bu_strictly10_ph.jpg

YMCA building to shelter homeless
Robert Hollis
Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. and its partner AF Evans Development Inc. of Oakland have purchased the 97-year-old Shih Yu-Lang Central YMCA building at 220 Golden Gate Ave. in San Francisco to provide shelter for the homeless.

The purchase price was $12.2 million, or about $81 a square foot. Funds for the acquisition came from the Mayor's Office of Housing and financing through U.S. Bank arranged by AF Evans, according to officials involved in the deal.

With funds from the city Department of Public Health and the Mayor's Office of Housing, the Tenderloin group and Evans will renovate the historic 150,000-square-foot building, creating affordable apartments with support services for homeless men and women. The property will also include a holistic health clinic and wellness center with 25 exam rooms, funded and operated by the Department of Health. It will serve the building's residents and other extremely low-income and homeless members of the community.

The project is scheduled for completion in 2010. The Tenderloin group will manage the building.

"Adding a health and wellness center along with housing and other supportive services sets a new standard for the supportive housing model," said Don Falk, executive director of the Tenderloin Development Corp. "It's an incredible opportunity to offer chronically homeless people housing, health services and other critical social support all in one place. It greatly increases their chances of breaking out of the cycle of homelessness."

Completed in 1910, the nine-story Central YMCA is one of the largest buildings along the Tenderloin's Golden Gate corridor. It currently includes a health and fitness center, wellness programs, a neighborhood youth and young adult center, computer and technology labs, a senior center, a 103-room hotel, and offices for several neighborhood non-profit organizations. The YMCA plans to move to an interim location 1½ blocks away while construction is finished on its new home at 377 Golden Gate Ave.

The new owners plan to restore and rehabilitate the structure, updating its antiquated systems while preserving the auditorium, lobby, atrium and mezzanine. A new grand-entry staircase will be built. The project will provide approximately 174 single room occupancy apartments with private bathrooms and kitchenettes. The renovation will also include a variety of common areas, including lounges, kitchens, fitness areas, and laundry facilities.

"This could really be a national model for housing for the homeless because of the involvement of the Department of Health," Falk said. "Finding homes for (the homeless) saves the city's health care system money, and health outcomes improve when people have housing."

"We are thrilled with this partnership," said Carmela Gold, executive director of the Shih Yu-Lang Central YMCA. "It was of paramount importance to us to find a buyer for this building who was deeply committed to continuing to support this community.

"We will be reinvesting the proceeds from this sale to build a new YMCA that will serve the Tenderloin for the next 100 years. We will always remain part of this neighborhood."

SFView
Jul 6, 2009, 8:42 PM
From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/06/MNAP189P39.DTL

High-rises on hold: What to do with empty lots?
John King, Chronicle Urban Design Writer

Monday, July 6, 2009

Plans to build a high-rise at 535 Mission St. are on hold. (Michael Macor / The Chronicle)
http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2009/07/04/mn-urbanspaces06_0500314361.jpg

(John Blanchard / The Chronicle)
http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2009/07/05/ba-urban_spaces__SFCG1246578998.jpg

The vacant lot at the southwest corner of 10th and Market streets in San Francisco. (Michael Macor / The Chronicle)
http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2009/07/04/mn-urbanspaces06_0500314362.jpg

The vacant lot at the southwest corner of 10th and Market streets sits idle. (Michael Macor / The Chronicle)
http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2009/07/04/mn-urbanspaces06_0500314363.jpg

This lot at Harrison and Fremont streets was to get 393 condominiums in a 41-story tower. (Michael Macor / The Chronicle)
http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2009/07/04/mn-urbanspaces06_0500314370.jpg

The vacant lot sits idle at 535 Mission Street in San Francisco. (Michael Macor / The Chronicle)
http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2009/07/04/mn-urbanspaces06_0500314360.jpg

A vacant lot on the northwest corner of Pine and Kearny streets across from the Bank of America building in San Francisco. (Michael Macor / The Chronicle)
http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2009/07/03/mn-urbanspaces06_0500314366.jpg


(07-05) 19:08 PDT -- The high-rise boom has gone quiet, and a new challenge faces San Francisco: deciding what to do with land cleared for towers that may not rise for another decade - if at all.


At least a dozen large development sites in the city's South of Market district now sit empty or covered by asphalt because of the recession. If history is any guide, developers will either leave them fenced off or use them as parking lots.

But there's another alternative - one that, if successful, could influence cities across the nation.

With ingenuity and a modest investment, San Francisco could breathe life into these voids until the demand for development returns. Some could be landscaped with fast-growing trees and shrubs that offer environmental benefits. Others could display art or offer casual spots for social interaction.

There are no clear models to follow: Any initiative must be acceptable to landowners, with details worked out in advance regarding such issues as maintenance and security. Done well, though, the payoff could far exceed the cost - creating short-term showcases rather than blight that drags its neighbors down.

Big plans laid low
Parcels stranded by the boom-turned-bust can be seen across the city, but two especially vivid examples are on display at either end of San Francisco's zone of high-rise change, the terrain south of Market Street bounded by the bay, South Van Ness Avenue and Interstate 80.

One is the northeast corner of Harrison and Fremont streets on Rincon Hill, where cars spill from a Bay Bridge off-ramp. The other is the southwest corner of 10th and Market streets, a portal for drivers heading in from the city's western neighborhoods.

Each site was cleared of buildings last year, and the owners have permission to construct towers. Yet each sits in limbo, empty and grim.

At 10th and Market, where 35- and 19-story towers would contain 719 condominiums, bricks are stacked crudely along the edge of a craterlike concrete basement - all that remains of the bank operations center that occupied the corner for decades.

Even the foundations are gone at 399 Fremont St. And instead of 393 condominiums in a 41-story tower, there's a terraced excavation longer than a football field, covered by sand, rubble and straggly weeds.

These sites are conspicuous, but hardly unique: Open parcels throughout the neighborhood have building proposals in the works. Some were cleared recently, others predate the boom. None is likely to be filled anytime soon.

"We are seeing a lull" that in many cases could last several years, said John Rahaim, the city's planning director. "There's the credit crunch as well as the housing slump."

Experimentation elsewhere
The construction freeze isn't confined to San Francisco. And most cities respond the same way - giving developers extra time to break ground while, often, allowing interim use as parking lots.

On Rincon Hill, for instance, developers are required to start construction within 18 months of receiving their planning approvals. If there are delays, they can request a procession of 12-month extensions.

That's what happened last month for two Rincon sites, including 399 Fremont. The Planning Commission voted to extend the approvals, stipulating that the lots be kept free of trash and graffiti and asking owners to come back with ideas on how to make things a bit more scenic.

In other cities, you'll find more novel efforts to fill in the blanks.

-- In New York, sculpture exhibitions may adorn a large downtown site. The concept is the brainchild of owner Trinity Real Estate and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, though details are still being worked out.

-- In Miami, elected Commissioner Marc Sarnoff has offered developers a deal: The city will rent empty sites at $1 a year to create temporary parks. The developers would help fund the landscaping, but their entitlements would remain for the life of the lease.

-- After the recession stalled a hotel one block from Seattle's Pike Place Market, developer Urban Visions let food vendors use a portion of the parking lot to serve up barbecued pork in May.

"This is a horizontal canvas we're playing with," said Urban Visions' Greg Smith. "Someday the highest and best use of this corner is a more urban development. In the meantime, this is a way to bring energy and life without a 20-year investment."

The one initiative in San Francisco concerns Octavia Boulevard, the four-block roadway created after the Central Freeway was removed in 2003.

Six years later, the city's vision of midrise housing along the boulevard remains elusive - causing frustrated neighbors to suggest that for now, some of the lots could serve as dog parks or community gardens.

"Our starting point is, how do you make a problem into an opportunity?" said Jim Warshell of the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association. "What's there is ugly, as opposed to an asset."

Alternatives to asphalt
Octavia offers a promising start: The lots are city-owned and relatively small. But the stakes are higher south of Market Street.

As long as prominent sites sit neglected in emerging districts like Rincon Hill, they're dampers on change. Imagine if, instead, the city loosened its rules to allow development rights to be extended three or five years - but only if developers in return allow interim landscapes on their land.

This doesn't mean extravagant plantings. On a half-acre lot, for instance, it would cost less than $2,000 to install an irrigation system. Cover the site with fast-growing trees like Brisbane box, and within three years there'd be a leafy bosque taking carbon from the air and sending fresh oxygen toward passers-by.

A developer seeking favorable attention could instead offer a site on a rotating basis to local artists or landscape architects.

Doug Wildmon of Friends of the Urban Forest offers another concept: Join up with a youth job-training program and run a tree farm. Chilean soapbark - well suited to serve as a street tree - could be arrayed in 7-gallon boxes at a cost of $50 per tree. With the proper care, in three years they'd be 12 feet tall - and ready to be sold at a wholesale cost of $150 each.

"You either get fast-growing trees and pulp them, or container trees that increase in size and can be planted somewhere else," Wildmon concluded.

Planning Director Rahaim said the city is open to creative short-term uses.

"The challenge is to make these parcels visually attractive while still sending a message that they're temporary," Rahaim said. At the very least, "it's incumbent on us to work with developers to clean them up, make sure they're safe and not a haven for illegal acts."

Economic tumult aside, today's urban centers are being redefined in remarkable and lasting ways. Neighborhoods are no longer defined by only one or two activities. The blocks south of Market Street offer an increasingly fine-grain blend of culture, commerce and housing.

More and more, that's what people want.

The future of healthy urban centers is the attraction of the place itself. Large empty lots - whether filled with cars or covered with weeds - detract from what can be. Conversely, imaginative use of prominent spaces could signal that San Francisco is a city of innovation, where unpredictability is part of the allure.

It deserves a try.

When plans go awry, lots empty for years
Developers talk of empty lots as short-term blanks, sure to be filled when the economy shifts. But "temporary" conditions have a way of becoming permanent, as these two parcels show.

-- If someone had planted and tended a redwood tree at the northwest corner of Pine and Kearny streets when the site was cleared in the 1970s, by now it could be a statuesque counterpoint to the Bank of America tower across the street. Instead, the fenced-off lot sits mangy and unkempt.

The site was owned for decades by powerhouse developer Walter Shorenstein, who filed a lawsuit in 1981 to block San Francisco's transit fee on new buildings. Not only did the city triumph, it then said that Shorenstein couldn't proceed with plans for a tower at this corner because it would cast a shadow on nearby St. Mary's Square.

"Now, our inclination is to do nothing," he sniffed at the time. The lot recently changed hands, but it's still forlorn, and long overdue for spiffing up.

-- Looking at the small parking lot at 524 Howard St., you wouldn't know this midblock site was approved for a 23-story tower - in 1989. That developer has come and gone since then, as have two others, with construction never quite getting started.

The current owner made noise in 2007 about hiring New York architect Richard Meier to produce a sleek new design - but that was before the economic tide went out yet again. Is there still an entitled project? The city says no, the developer's attorney says yes. One thing is certain: The parking lot won't disappear anytime soon.

- John King

Coming Tuesday
Three stalled tower sites in downtown San Francisco - and three provocative visions from some of the area's most creative designers.

E-mail John King at jking@sfchronicle.com.

WildCowboy
Jul 6, 2009, 8:54 PM
Imagine the complaints that would arise when the builders finally try to build on the "parks". As much as I hate the empty lots, you have to be careful about what you give away.

peanut gallery
Jul 8, 2009, 2:06 AM
Mercy Housing update. I'm still waiting for the red paint to go on the big cement wedge:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2658/3699980978_5b53e2b95d_b.jpg

Also note the tower crane for the main building is gone. The annex in back still has its crane and is progressing too:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3504/3699168225_20a8140bdc_b.jpg

Kingofthehill
Jul 8, 2009, 6:41 AM
Why is BART so expensive?!?!

Gordo
Jul 8, 2009, 6:50 AM
Why is BART so expensive?!?!

Short story? The structure of the BART tax district encourages providing too much service (both on existing lines and on extensions) to areas that don't have the critical mass of non-peak riders needed to keep costs low through volume of riders. BART peaks worse than any heavy-rail subway-grade transit system in the world because of this. To top it off, even though BART peaks so bad, fares don't change at all during peak periods.

The long story is much more complicated - too much emphasis on expansions outside of the BART tax district, poor management, out-of-control union work rules (the wages aren't that bad, the work rules are absurd).

BTinSF
Jul 8, 2009, 7:49 AM
:previous: BART is essentially a commuter rail system, not an intra-urban transit system, so, of course, it peaks during commute hours. And to make the case for them, the citizens of eastern Alameda and Contra Costa counties have paid the extra 0.5% sales tax for 30+ years like the rest of us. It isn't hard to understand why they demanded service and eventually got it (20+ years after the rest of us). Perhaps there should have been a special taxing district or some other mechanism to keep BART from having to serve the folks east of the hills, but that was not the way things were set up and if you've ever done the 580 or 80 commute, you'd understand why they'd want the BART option even if only for the commute.

BART fares are comparable to CalTrain, the other commuter rail system. But I do hope the BART Board stands firm now and takes a strike if it has to.

PS--Re the work rules. When I used to commute to Concord every day, my train would stop at the yard just before we got to Concord Station and somebody would bring the driver a morning newspaper and a cup of coffee. We would sit there until that somebody arrived, even if it made me and the other passengers late for work.

BTinSF
Jul 8, 2009, 7:59 AM
Projects begin to emerge for Upper Market
Robert Selna, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 8, 2009

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2009/07/07/bu-uppermarket08_0500346255.jpg
The proposed development at 1960 Market St. would replace a shuttered gas station, in photo below, with 115 condominiums. (Arquitectonica / Arquitectonica)


When San Francisco's Central Freeway came down in 2003, the laid-back Upper Market area caught the eye of developers and planners as one of the city's best places to add housing and small businesses.

But the area's expected growth stalled as planners, city officials and residents spent several years debating the finer points of how the area should evolve.

Now projects are finally starting to emerge, providing a preview of what the neighborhood might look like in coming years.

Approximately 10 developments are in the city's planning pipeline, proposing - among other things - to convert former gas stations into condominiums with coffee shops, stores and high-end grocery stores on the first floor.

And while most of the new construction might be slowed by the tight credit market, developers and community groups are actively negotiating the details of new buildings and the businesses they might house.

Since 1959, the freeway had loomed over Market Street at Octavia Boulevard, creating a psychological barrier that discouraged development in the seven blocks of Market that run west to Castro Street. The 40-foot-high, concrete double decks were damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and ultimately demolished. When one section of the freeway was torn down in 1992, a once-severed row of Hayes Street shops blossomed into trendy boutiques, offering a glimpse of changes that might happen nearby.

But for now, the Upper Market area feels the way it has for years - quiet, given its central location. Storefronts include a comic-book store, dry cleaners, barbers, restaurants, a Safeway and a much higher concentration of gas stations than in many commercial corridors.

All along, city officials looked to guide the area toward becoming a more densely populated and thriving commercial strip, where residents walk and bike to shops and commute on public transportation. In that vein, officials drafted rules permitting new buildings that pack in more units and severely limit parking. Special fees were imposed on builders to pay for affordable housing, parks and other amenities.

Parking issues

Since the new rules were implemented last year, developers generally have tried to lobby the city for more parking than is allowed (one car per residential unit) and disagreements have flared over architecture and building size. But there appears to be consensus that growth - as outlined by the years of planning - could be a good thing.

"For a long time now if you came up Market Street from the Ferry Building you'd hit Octavia and you'd see some gas stations and a Safeway," said Dennis Richards, president of the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association, one of several local resident organizations. "The area has had a weird sense of a suburban place. ... We think it's appropriate to develop it in a more urban way where people will be encouraged to associate with each other in a more walkable area."

Two projects planned for the short block of Market Street between Buchanan and Dolores streets presage what the future might hold.

At Buchanan, developer Brian Spiers has received city permission to replace a closed Union 76 station with 115 glassy, modern condominiums in a nine-story building whose corner entrance will be set back several feet from the street for outdoor seating.

Just kitty-corner, the Prado development firm has proposed 80 condominiums in three interconnected structures and a ground floor Whole Foods market. The project will replace the S&C Ford dealership that closed in 2006.

More units allowed

Because of new zoning, Spiers was permitted to build 30 more units into the same amount of space than was previously allowed. He paid about $10 million for the parcel and has had to change his project's design and build less parking in response to community concerns, but he said he thinks it's worth it.

"If you're going to build housing, there is no better place than a shut-down gas station with all of this transportation and shopping and existing infrastructure," Spiers said.

Peter Cohen, who lives in the area and is an advocate for affordable housing and public transit, said that the neighborhood already is thriving but could benefit from well-planned development.

"The question is how you preserve the character of the area while supporting growth," Cohen said. "That's the sweet spot we are aiming for."

E-mail Robert Selna at rselna@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/08/BU4V18GQPC.DTL

Gordo
Jul 8, 2009, 8:11 AM
:previous: BART is essentially a commuter rail system, not an intra-urban transit system, so, of course, it peaks during commute hours.

Sure, but while you see a dramatic decrease in service levels for commuter rail systems during non-peak times, you don't for BART because the citizens view it (and were sold on it) as a "metro" or "subway" system - meaning minimum 15 or 20 minute frequencies during all hours of operation. BART would cost a lot less to ride if service to the outer stations was cut during non-peak times like you see every other commuter rail system in the world do. The peaking is only (well, not only, but more of) a problem because service isn't allowed to rise and fall with the peaks.

And to make the case for them, the citizens of eastern Alameda and Contra Costa counties have paid the extra 0.5% sales tax for 30+ years like the rest of us. It isn't hard to understand why they demanded service and eventually got it (20+ years after the rest of us). Perhaps there should have been a special taxing district or some other mechanism to keep BART from having to serve the folks east of the hills, but that was not the way things were set up and if you've ever done the 580 or 80 commute, you'd understand why they'd want the BART option even if only for the commute.

Sure, but the entire western and northern sides of San Francisco have never had service either, yet citizens of those areas continue to pay for BART. The fact that there are different municipalities in the outer eastern counties is just semantics, really. The outer stations were built with park and ride lots and the intention of people driving to them. The San Francisco stations were not. It's pretty insane that it takes longer on transit to get from the outer Sunset to downtown than it does from Pittsburg to downtown. The dramatic population increase in the outer areas since the adoption of the BART district has helped drive the extensions (because it has increased the voting influence of those counties) - even though more than half of SF's population has never had access to BART and has paid for the system the entire time (while many of those areas were tiny 40 years ago and only really started contributing decent amounts over the last 20 or so years).

BART fares are comparable to CalTrain, the other commuter rail system. But I do hope the BART Board stands firm now and takes a strike if it has to.

You do bring up another very important reason that BART is so insanely expensive that I forgot to mention - BART basically functions (in many areas) as commuter rail, yet uses proprietary technology and a unique-to-the-US train gauge, making the purchase and upkeep of equipment much more expensive than that of other commuter rail systems (including Caltrain).

colemonkee
Jul 8, 2009, 2:55 PM
I really like that Arquitectonica Upper Market project.

WonderlandPark
Jul 8, 2009, 4:15 PM
BART is essentially not a commuter rail system. 90% of people think of it like the Washington Metro, the "L" or whatnot. And they are correct. Look at real commuter rail schedules and headways. BART does not fit that model.

CalTrain runs extremely frequently for a commuter rail system, but go look at METRA in Chicago which is a "classic" commuter rail system and you will see that BART really should be classified as a heavy rail system.

fflint
Jul 8, 2009, 7:41 PM
BART is both a commuter rail system (out in suburbia) and an inner-city metro system--but it's not very good at either task.

BTinSF
Jul 8, 2009, 7:45 PM
BART is essentially not a commuter rail system. 90% of people think of it like the Washington Metro, the "L" or whatnot.

If they do, they are wrong. BART follows a single path through San Francisco. Its system is designed to bring people from the suburbs to the Financial District and/or Union Square (and back home again). You can go all over Washington on their Metro or all over Chicago on the EL. You most certainly cannot go all over San Francisco on BART. That's why Muni exists.

BART does serve the function for city residents of providing rail transit to those places--the Mission, Glen Park--that happen to be on the line, so it does have a minor intra-city role. But that's not what it mostly does or was meant to do.

BTinSF
Jul 8, 2009, 11:49 PM
Hotel Default a Gamble
Another luxury hotel in San Francisco has run afoul of its lenders.

New York developer Millennium Partners LLC, which owns the 277-room Four Seasons San Francisco hotel, didn't make payments in May and June on the hotel's $90 million securitized mortgage in a bid to compel the loan's special servicer to rework its terms. Millennium, which mortgaged the hotel in 2007, confirmed in a statement on Monday that it withheld the payments.

"In order to commence discussions with the debt holders of the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco, Millennium Partners has strategically withheld payment of debt service," the statement reads. "Conversations on restructuring the debt have begun, and Millennium Partners is hopeful that they will result in a positive outcome."

The Four Seasons delinquency comes on the heels of lender Barclays Capital in May putting the 390-room Stanford Court hotel in San Francisco into receivership because of a default of the hotel's $90 million mortgage. Stanford Court operates under Marriott International Inc.'s Renaissance brand.

Many hotels aren't generating enough cash flow in this recession to make interest payments on their mortgages. To wit, the delinquency rate on securitized mortgages with hotels pledged as collateral was 4.3% in June, up from 0.5% a year earlier, according to Trepp LLC. At the Four Seasons San Francisco, the problem was declining cash flow and slumping value, according to Realpoint LLC, a credit-rating agency. Realpoint estimates that the hotel's value, appraised at $135 million upon the origination of its mortgage in 2007, has declined to $80 million this year, well below its mortgage balance.
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124701571481009315.html#mod=todays_us_money_and_investing

So what I'm wondering is whether this effects people who own condos in the building and, if so, how. At the very least, I'd suspect if the hotel is in trouble the hotel services that are supposed to be available to condo owners might get a little ragged. I'm finling this under "Further perils of combining commercial and residential uses in the same building".

pseudolus
Jul 9, 2009, 1:17 AM
BART does serve the function for city residents of providing rail transit to those places--the Mission, Glen Park--that happen to be on the line, so it does have a minor intra-city role.

For what it's worth, I understand that Balboa Park is the busiest non-downtown station in the system.

Jerry of San Fran
Jul 10, 2009, 6:34 AM
I am not an engineer, but with that said, I think BART is over engineered. Having a motor under each car does not make sense to me.

Last year I sat in a car with a hard floor and was fascinated and amazed to see a paper clip on the floor standing on end! The magnetic field from the motor under the car caused the paper clip to stand on end between stations.

BTinSF
Jul 17, 2009, 5:48 PM
American fury as Foster grabs $120m San Francisco job
14 July, 2009 | By Robbie Blakeley

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/pictures/595xAny/3/9/6/1206396_UNPlaza.jpg

Foster + Partners has angered three ‘local’ firms by winning the stimulus-backed renovation of a historic San Francisco landmark

The decision to select a British firm to renovate 50 United Nations Plaza has provoked controversy as the project was made possible by the $130 billion federal stimulus fund for building renovation and construction.

Martin Bovill, vice president of development at Hornberger & Worstell (H & W), one of the firms that missed out, said: ‘You’d think that it would make sense to keep the money here rather than send it overseas. It’s not like you’re in Timbuktu. You have very well-qualified firms in the city with experience in San Francisco historic preservation.’

Firms involved in the losing bids - SOM, Architectural Resources Group with HKS, and Hornberger & Worstell with William McDonough - have offices in San Francisco.

The Recovery Act that guides stimulus spending does not state that design and construction work must go to American firms, only that the building materials such as steel have to be produced in the states.

A spokesperson for the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages most federal buildings, said: ‘We chose the best bid based on the qualitative factors mandated by the Brooks Act and look forward to moving through the negotiations process with ELS and discovering how much work will be done by local contractors and how many jobs will be created in the Bay Area.’

A six-story, 32,000m² Beaux-Arts building, 50 United Nations Plaza was designed in 1936 by Arthur Brown Jr, who was also behind San Francisco’s City Hall. The building has been vacant since 2007.

The GSA said the project aims to give the building a: ‘seismic upgrade and new electrical, heating, and plumbing systems. Windows will be replaced, elevators improved, and hazardous materials abated. The building will be changed to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. The interior spaces will also be reconfigured in order to make it more efficient office space.’

Foster & Partners declined to comment.

In a previous statement, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said ‘the decision to restore the beautiful 50 United Nations Plaza Federal Building is good news for San Francisco, for the Civic Center area, and for our city’s economy.’

‘Renovating this building, improving its energy efficiency, and making it more accessible for people with disabilities will create and save jobs for San Franciscans.’


Source: http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/american-fury-as-foster-grabs-120m-san-francisco-job/5204668.article

Foster & Partners. Hmmm. Guess we'll get a quality job. Count me one San Franciscan who isn't bothered by that idea.

Note: A comment in the Socketsite bit on this points out that this is a similar project Foster did in Britain: http://www.fosterandpartners.com/Projects/0898/Default.aspx

peanut gallery
Jul 17, 2009, 9:35 PM
I read that yesterday and had two thoughts:

1. The architecture fees can't be all that much compared to the contractors' fees, which will likely go to local firms.

2. Given that the project calls for seismic upgrade, new mechanicals and windows, improved elevators, ramps, etc to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act and reconfigured office space, it's not like they are going to change the look of the building from the outside. So it won't result in some landmark that firms would be known for instantly.

Then I read something on SocketSite about needing a local firm who will write up the actual contracts and thus keep most of the fees anyway. Given all that, why are some firms making such an issue of this project going to Foster?

MasonsInquiries
Jul 17, 2009, 10:20 PM
Source: http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/american-fury-as-foster-grabs-120m-san-francisco-job/5204668.articlecool building!:D

BTinSF
Jul 18, 2009, 3:02 AM
II read something on SocketSite about needing a local firm who will write up the actual contracts and thus keep most of the fees anyway. Given all that, why are some firms making such an issue of this project going to Foster?

I doubt Foster has an architectural license in CA so he will need a local partner who does. Also, they will certainly need a seismic engineering sub and some other specialists.

If you looked at that Royal Treasury building he renovated, reminds me a lot of Gai Aulenti's work on the Asian Art Museum--the glassed over light wells, opened up interior walls and all. Wonder if he'll be doing that sort of thing here. A budget of $120 million is about 2/3 what I recall the Asian renovation costing.

JAC6
Jul 26, 2009, 6:23 AM
From the San Mateo shoreline near Foster City. I thought it was an interesting perspective.

http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/gg30/jcrotty_bucket/skyscraper/SFfromSM.jpg

peanut gallery
Jul 26, 2009, 9:46 PM
Nice shot. I like angles that integrate ORH with the rest of the skyline.

KevinFromTexas
Jul 28, 2009, 4:39 PM
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/other/2009/07/28/0728tbriefs.html


CONSTRUCTION

Houston's Hines exits skyscraper project

HOUSTON — Houston real estate developer Hines Interests and its partners plan to surrender a 43-story San Francisco skyscraper to their lenders.

The joint venture of Hines and Sterling American Property Inc., its New York-based partner on the building, will "exercise its right to deed" 333 Bush St. to its lenders, said Kim Jagger, a Hines spokeswoman.

Denis Couture, a spokesman for mortgage-holder Brookfield Real Estate Finance, said his company and Munich Hypo Bank are preparing to foreclose on the building.

The building is one of 15 San Francisco office properties listed as distressed by Real Capital Analytics Inc., which tracks commercial real estate sales.

Hines-Sterling paid $281 million for the property in 2007. A law firm that had been the tower's anchor tenant declared bankruptcy in December.

peanut gallery
Jul 28, 2009, 7:28 PM
If you're interested, there's a lot more detail on 333 Bush posted here (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=4377383&postcount=2091).

markermiller
Jul 29, 2009, 6:30 PM
In case anyone missed it, there's an interesting John King article in yesterday's Chronicle on Jane Jacobs: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/comments/view?f=/c/a/2009/07/27/DDUV18TS78.DTL

Someone posted this comment: " 'A decade later, she was the nation's strongest voice explaining why healthy cities need old buildings'. What a pity that the Willie Brown & Gavin Newsom eras of San Francisco governance completely and contemptuously ignored Jane Jacobs' sage advice, in their headlong rush to let their developer pals turn as much of the city as physically possible into a clone of Manhattan. Concrete canyons with freezing cold Bay winds channeled through them. How inviting!"....

To which I replied: "Regarding comments lamenting our “concrete canyons”: far too many NIMBYS evoke the name of Jane Jacobs. Our main trouble is not the possibility that we'll morph into New York City. It's that we'll squander the unusually abundant opportunities we've been given to build a truly superb city. Jane Jacobs was, above all, an advocate for cities being CITIES (as distinct from farms, parks, tiny villages, or suburban planned mediocrities.) San Francisco was originally planned and built to be a CITY... and has been backpedaling away from that status ever since the early 1980s.

I sometimes disagree with John King's perspective, but he's certainly right when he says "...Jacobs' quest for "thoughtful citizen involvement" has morphed into "all-powerful neighborhood residents, who seek conditions to stay exactly as they are and reward politicians who agree with them." So many blocks of the City are a crumbling mess because our predominate civic ethic has become: Not In MY Back Yard!"

BTinSF
Jul 31, 2009, 2:14 PM
Friday, July 31, 2009
S.F. seeks a ‘super dorm’
City, schools struggle with student housing
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen

When Menlo Capital Group Managing Partner Karan Suri decided to convert an empty former tourist hotel at 851 California St. to student housing, he knew there was a long-simmering need in San Francisco.

But he had no idea how dire the situation was. Within a week, nearly half of the building’s 100 beds had been leased by students with proof of enrollment in a San Francisco college or university.

“We already have 40 desperate students, and we have not started marketing to the schools yet,” said Suri. “It will be fully leased in the next three weeks. The desperation knocked my socks off.”

Suri said rents are $800-$950 per person for a double and $1100-$1300 for a single.

The reaction has prompted Menlo Capital to join the growing group of institutions, housing advocates, city officials and private developers hoping to address the growing need for a place for San Francisco’s students to live. The city’s 31 universities and colleges enroll 82,000 full-time students and 13,100 full-time faculty, according to a study by Grubb & Ellis. Nine of the schools provide some housing, for a total of 8,869 beds. That is roughly one bed for every 10 students.

A taskforce is looking at possible incentives to help make student housing a reality in San Francisco. The group includes the Housing Action Coalition and administrators from California College of the Arts, UC Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco State and other schools. Capstone Development, which has built 31,000 beds on 54 campuses across the country, is actively looking at possible development sites. The Mayor’s Office of Housing has also been involved in discussions.

Thus far most of the talk has focused on the concept of a “super dorm,” where a developer builds a large dorm that is then leased by multiple educational institutions. In Chicago, a number of institutions collaborated on a 1,750-bed super dorm, and similar projects have also been built in other markets. The problem is that San Francisco’s 15 percent affordable housing requirements makes building affordable housing to struggling students economically infeasible: Dorm rents would have to cover the cost of the affordable units.

Students have been traditionally excluded from affordable housing programs because their economic status is so difficult to assess. Many students have little or no income but ample parental support; others are on their own and surviving on a combination of student loans and wages,

“It’s like building low-income housing without any subsidies,” said David Meckel, CCA’s director of research and planning.

Doug Shoemaker, director of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s housing program, said “we are absolutely interested in trying to encourage the student housing movement to go forward. ... We understand that there is a need for student house and we get that it’s a category of housing that doesn’t fit well within the inclusionary housing ordinance.”

Shoemaker said several supervisors have expressed interest in sponsoring legislation that would facilitate student housing, but cautioned that the bill would be carefully crafted so it doesn’t become a loophole for market-rate housing developers looking to avoid affordable housing requirements.

“You don’t want to create a new problem to solve an old one,” said Shoemaker.

Public-private deals

Capstone Senior Vice President Dan Howard, who lives in San Francisco, said third-party student housing development generally requires some public-private partnership. At Arizona State University, Capstone developed 1,300 beds in two 13-story towers. There the city donated some of the land and helped expedite the entitlement process.

“We think there is a real need for housing. The real issue is what can students pay for rent and the cost and uncertainty of developing in a place like San Francisco,” said Howard. “There has to be some effort to reduce overall costs — whether that is cheaper financing, cheaper land, or a cheaper cost of construction, or higher density.”

Tim Colen, executive director of the Housing Action Coalition, said student housing should be a policy priority for the city because it would free up thousands of large flats students occupy from the Richmond to the Mission to the Haight. By moving students to more affordable dorms, larger units would be freed up for families, seniors and working professionals.

“The purpose was to get many, many thousands of students off of Craigslist and into housing the schools could provide,” said Colen. “You can’t argue that students don’t occupy a lot of family-sized housing units.”

Hurting recruitment

Meckel said the lack of housing hinders recruitment. CCA has 250 beds for 1,700 students, including 90 beds at the Julia Morgan YWCA in downtown Oakland. CCA also has 12 students at the UCSF dorm in Mission Bay.

“These small schools add a lot of energy to the economy and not having housing is a roadblock to getting the best talent to relocate here,” said Meckel. “Everybody is a little frustrated with our inability to do this. We certainly don’t need to be able to house everybody, but you like to be able to house the incoming class as they get settled.”

Hastings houses 280 students out of a total of 1,250, most of them at 100 McAllister St. The school has a waiting list for another 100 units, according to CFO David Seward.

“It’s a very competitive higher-education segment and this time of year everybody scurries around at the last minute trying to nest in a desirable school,” said Seward. “The market here doesn’t allow that. We book up in May. For kids making their final decision right now on where to go to school the housing options in San Francisco are very daunting. We have kids commuting in from Livermore.”

sduxbury@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4963
Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/08/03/story1.html

For anybody liking this idea and seeking an investment, there are at least 2 publicly traded REITs that also develop third party student housing.

BTinSF
Jul 31, 2009, 6:04 PM
Fast-selling projects shrink condo inventory

As painful as it’s been for San Francisco housing developers — and it’s been just brutal — the swollen inventory of new construction condos is suddenly looking a bit thin.

First you have Intracorp’s 128-unit Hayes, which sold out a few weeks ago. Then there is the Montgomery at 74 New Montgomery St., which has nine units available. Meanwhile, two Mission Bay projects are cooking. Intracorp’s 269-unit Arterra is down to 60 units and Bosa Development’s 99-unit Radiance Phase One has 12 condos left. Finally, Tishman Speyer’s Infinity has had 12 straight weeks in which nine units or more have closed.

Of course, no developers are meeting their pro formas these days. But when you have construction loans to pay off, sometimes you have to cut your losses and move on. As Bosa development CEO Nat Bosa said recently: “There is no use in kidding around here — my first phase is costing me a hell of a lot of money out of my pocket.”

Still, should sales continue at the current clip, inventory under $1 million will be scarce by early next year. That could be good news for Jackson Pacific’s 165-unit One Hawthorne St. when it opens a year from now.

Alan Mark of the Mark Co., which is handling sales and marketing for the Arterra, the Montgomery, the Hayes, and One Hawthorne, does not expect prices to rise any time soon. But he said developers are gaining some leverage to negotiate reductions and concessions.


Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2009/08/03/newscolumn1.html

Time to get some new stuff underway?

peanut gallery
Jul 31, 2009, 6:30 PM
Like ORH phase 2? I know I'm dreaming. Good news for One Hawthorne though

AndrewK
Jul 31, 2009, 9:28 PM
just hope things go well enough for bosa that he actually decides to start radiance II.

AndrewK
Jul 31, 2009, 9:31 PM
oh and someone should mention to the biz journal columnists that the plural of pro forma is pro formis. haha no thats way too nerdy.

peanut gallery
Jul 31, 2009, 11:16 PM
Well, the piles are sitting there ready to go. If materials costs come down enough, maybe they will.

BTinSF
Jul 31, 2009, 11:50 PM
By the way, I noticed today 2 "Webcore Builders" signs have gone up at the PUC site at Golden Gate & Polk but still no building permit posted that I can see. I'm still hopeful. They are working like crazy on the foundation. Hard to believe they are doing all they are doing--essentially building a nice reinforced hole--if they aren't planning to proceed.

peanut gallery
Aug 1, 2009, 4:18 PM
Great! Post some pictures. The last ones I saw were of the demo.

BTinSF
Aug 4, 2009, 6:00 PM
I'm not actually sure what this means, other than that the funding is complicated and the Federal "stimulus" isn't paying for it:

Hearing delay for SFPUC's ultragreen HQ
By: JOHN UPTON
08/03/09 4:52 PM PDT

A committee hearing into the planned construction of a $190 million super-green San Francisco Public Utilities Commission headquarters will be postponed, after officials decided to add $47.4 million in additional appropriations.

The (Board of Supervisors) Budget and Finance Committee was scheduled on Wednesday to discuss plans to construct a windmill-equipped, water-recycling 12-floor office building near City Hall at 525 Golden Gate Ave.

The building was planned as the nation’s greenest office building when it was proposed in 2007 by Mayor Gavin Newsom. Since then, a series of cutting-edge environmental features, such as windowsill-embedded solar panels, have been dumped from the plans to slash costs.

The new proposal is nonetheless planned to qualify for a LEED Platinum rating – the greenest rating possible for an office building.

The Board of Supervisors has already appropriated $43.8 million of the $190.6 million project.

But plans to appropriate the remainder of the money, $146.9 million, have been delayed, after officials decided to add an additional $47.4 million in financing-related appropriations that previously were planned to be considered at a separate hearing.

That extra $47.4 million will not be spent on design or construction of the project, according to SFPUC Chief Financial Officer Todd Rydstrom. Rather, the cash reserve needs to be appropriated and squirreled away to satisfy the requirements of lenders, according to Rydstrom.

A Budget and Finance Committee hearing into the proposed appropriation of the additional $194.3 million needed for the project is expected to be held next week.

The project will be financed through bonds, property sales, grants and city savings, SFPUC documents show.
Source: http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/under-the-dome/Hearing-delay-for-SFPUCs-ultragreen-HQ.html

I think it's good news, though. Sounds like the project is moving forward. They are certainly digging. The site is a beehive of activity (I guess that's the $43.8 million at work).

Anyway, Socketsite had some rendering I haven't seen before:

http://www.socketsite.com/525%20Golden%20Gate%20Avenue.jpg
Source: http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2009/08/additional_green_reserves_to_satisfy_lenders_for_sfpucs.html

StevenW
Aug 12, 2009, 8:25 PM
Is the Transbay tower still a go? :)

peanut gallery
Aug 12, 2009, 8:48 PM
It's up to Hines. They've paid the city for the rights. But whether they decide to move ahead or sell those rights or just wait awhile, is hard to say. The terminal itself seems to be moving ahead though, and that's my main concern.

StevenW
Aug 21, 2009, 1:57 PM
Well, it's a start. :) Thanks. :)

BTinSF
Aug 21, 2009, 5:10 PM
Halleluja! :banana: :pepper: :tomato:


Freshly Approved New PUC Building Costs More Than You Think
by Chris Roberts
August 12, 2009 1:00 PM

http://sfappeal.com/news/images/newpuc.jpg

If William Randolph Hearst were both a green-technology nut and alive, he might find much to like with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's proposed $346 million green technology Playboy Mansion new headquarters, funding of which cleared a Board of Supervisors Committee on Wednesday.

The 13-story, glass-heavy monument to water filtration, glass and -- uh, from what we can tell -- glass has been covered much in local media, so we won't reinvent the windmill here, except to reiterate: it's been a pet project of Gavin Newsom's since it was announced in 2007, it replaces a vacant lot at 525 Golden Gate which in turn replaced a long-vacant state building, and it will allow the SFPUC to move out of leased office space on Market Street -- thereby SAVING YOU MONEY since your water bill will no longer be paying off someone else's rent (though to be sure, such environmentally-friendly San Simeons do not come free).

Again, much has been already covered heavily -- such as the scaling-back of the original plans because, believe it or not, amenities like magic moving windows and windmills on every floor are a wee bit expensive -- but a few points warrant mention:
Most media reports tabulate the building's cost at $190 million. The real cost is closer to $346 million, according to the Budget Analysts Office (that includes debt service). $346 million for a building sounds like a lot, but consider -- the PUC estimates leasing its current office space for the next 30 years would run them $380 million. $60 million -- oh, the SAVINGS!

The city didn't spend much to acquire the site, mind -- and in fact profited heavily (sorta). After Loma Prieta damaged the old state building at 525 Golden Gate, the state sold the site, janky-ass building included, for $2.00, which the city then flipped to its own Public Utilities Commission for $9.9 million (plus a tall, cool glass of Hetch-Hetchy H20 with ice). Nice flip, SF.

The building will include a child-care center. What, you were expecting SFPUC's wee tykes to work in the on-site coal mine?

Design is not yet final, according to memos presented to the Board, but will include a 1,500-square foot Slow Food Cafe. Windmill-powered pulled pork sandwiches? As long as it's served on glass!

Source: http://www.sfappeal.com/news/2009/08/if-william-randolph-hearst-were.php

And I can report first hand the excavation is moving rapidly forward. Pretty much all traces of the previous building are gone (except a bit of the perimeter foundation wall now being used as a retaining wall for the new excavation) and they are digging ever deeper.

ninipanini
Aug 21, 2009, 5:13 PM
I just took some video and pictures of some great modern buildings in Amsterdam... take a look, maybe it can be inspiration for some future developments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_INdCWPBz4

peanut gallery
Aug 21, 2009, 5:15 PM
Yeah! How about a photo update of the site, BT? Is this too small for its own thread? I can't remember.

BTinSF
Aug 21, 2009, 5:17 PM
More:

Green building for SFPUC granted funds
By: JOSHUA SABATINI
08/18/09 6:30 PM PDT

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission plan to spend $194 million to pay for the construction of a windmill-laden, water-recycling 13-floor office building for the agency was approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisor in unanimous vote.

The building will serve as the PUC’s new headquarters.

The building, which had been scaled back, will be located at 525 Golden Gate Ave. Construction costs alone are estimated at $137 million. Other costs include $4.4 million for furniture, fixtures and equipment.
Source: http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/under-the-dome/Green-building-for-SFPUC-granted-funds-53627852.html

peanut gallery
Aug 21, 2009, 5:25 PM
Yes, Amsterdam has fantastic architecture -- both old and new. Unfortunately, in SF most of the bolder stuff can only be done on a smaller scale. It's hard to imagine a new large skyscraper with truly cutting-edge design getting built in this town. On the other hand, I don't recall a lot of proposals for large buildings that I'd consider in the class of those in your video. (I'm willfully forgetting about SOM's Transbay.)

BTinSF
Aug 21, 2009, 5:39 PM
Yeah! How about a photo update of the site, BT? Is this too small for its own thread? I can't remember.

At 12 stories, it doesn't make the 200' minimum for a thread. But I still think it's going to be an interesting and attractive building that will spruce up Civic Center (and I like pulled pork--even cooked with electricity from a windmill ;) )

peanut gallery
Aug 21, 2009, 5:46 PM
Ha! And you can top it off with some nice collected rainwater off the side of the building. Err, maybe not.

BTinSF
Aug 25, 2009, 2:38 AM
Yeah! How about a photo update of the site, BT?

New SFPUC HQ (Golden Gate & Polk)
http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x128/BSTJr/IMG_0258.jpg?t=1251167770

viewguysf
Aug 25, 2009, 3:12 AM
BT's great new sandbox. :D

peanut gallery
Aug 25, 2009, 6:40 AM
Thanks, BT. I take it they aren't going that deep for a 12-story building, even if there will be parking down there. Perhaps they're getting close.

BTinSF
Aug 25, 2009, 8:29 AM
Thanks, BT. I take it they aren't going that deep for a 12-story building, even if there will be parking down there. Perhaps they're getting close.

Can LEED Platinum buildings have {{gasp}} parking? :D

Gordo
Aug 25, 2009, 1:53 PM
Can LEED Platinum buildings have {{gasp}} parking? :D

For bikes ;)

CityKid
Aug 25, 2009, 11:18 PM
Nice to see that something else is getting built in SF. I just moved to Brooklyn, NY for law school, so you guys will have to keep me posted on all the cool things happening in San Francisco.

peanut gallery
Aug 26, 2009, 4:40 PM
Anyone catch this news about 110 Embarcadero on SFGate (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?blogid=55&entry_id=46003) yesterday:

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2008/11/07/ba-waterfront08__0498009274.jpg
Move over James Bond. We're talking land use.

And you thought politics was dirty.

The clash between preservationists and developers over the future of a waterfront union hall where the 1934 General Strike began has a new wrinkle: spying allegations.

This had already been shaping up as a bitter fight with labor and architectural heritage types pitted against developer Hines, which wants to replace the old longshoreman's union hall with an uber-green office building -- one of the tallest on the city's waterfront.

The two sides don't even agree on the address. The preservationists refer to it as 113 Steuart St. Hines calls it 110 The Embarcadero. (The preservation battle has also fractured labor, with the Building and Construction Trades Council backing the development for the jobs it would bring.)

Now the group that wants the building declared a city landmark says a Hines employee misrepresented himself as an avid preservationist to get access to the group's Aug. 4 meeting, where documents were provided and strategy discussed for upcoming hearings before the Board of Supervisors and its Land Use Committee.

The Hines employee, Daniel McGill, left with the documents and took "copious notes" during the meeting, which included discussion with an aide to Supervisor Chris Daly, who in April introduced a resolution to landmark the union hall, said Ralph Schoenman, a member of the 113 Steuart St. Landmark Committee.

The committee blasted McGill's actions as "unethical" and "a form of industrial espionage" in a recent letter to city supervisors, saying the behavior "raises serious ethical concerns regarding Hines' fitness to conduct joint projects with the city of San Francisco."

Hines has agreed to pay $235 million to the Transbay Joint Powers Authority to construct an office tower as part of the Transbay Terminal project but has recently defaulted on other major projects around the Bay Area.

A Hines executive acknowledged McGill attended the preservation meeting, but said he did so after being told it was open to the public.

"He signed in as a citizen of San Francisco," said Paul Paradis, a senior vice president with Hines.

Schoenman called that a "self-serving fabrication."

"It was not open to the public," he said.

Paradis said Hines has agreed not to copy the documents McGill received and will return them to the preservation committee.

"We understand that they're upset," Paradis said. "They are making it clear that they don't want us at their meetings. That was not clear before."

Daly called the incident "bad form" but downplayed its impact.

"My guess is Hines didn't pick up any state secrets," he said. "Developers are developers, and there's a reason why people don't tend to hold them in very high esteem -- I would say a notch below politicians."

Posted By: John Coté (Email) | August 25 2009 at 09:00 AM

Daly called the incident "bad form" -- oh, the irony!

Gordo
Aug 26, 2009, 4:58 PM
"My guess is Hines didn't pick up any state secrets," he said. "Developers are developers, and there's a reason why people don't tend to hold them in very high esteem -- I would say a notch below politicians."

Quote of the day - brought to you by Chris Daly.

SFView
Aug 26, 2009, 10:17 PM
Here is more on why preservationists feel 113 Steuart St. is worth saving:
(Sorry if this has already been posted somewhere. I don't recall.)

From:
http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=8472&catid=&volume_id=398&issue_id=429&volume_num=43&issue_num=31

news@sfbg.com


Historic proportions
Green City: A battle over the former longshoremen's hall has sparked a move to rethink waterfront planning
BY REBECCA BOWE
Wednesday April 29, 2009

GREEN CITY "110 The Embarcadero" is the stately address of a building that doesn't exist yet. But the battle that continues to be waged over this proposed development, along with skirmishes that are brewing over other proposed buildings nearby, speaks volumes about a complicated tug-of-war that is emerging over a prominent slice of the city's northern waterfront.

http://www.sfbg.com/images_newsite/319-historic.web.jpg
A Bancroft Library archival
photo of the labor hall entrance


Preservationists are concerned about saving a union hall on Steuart Street that housed the International Longshoremen's Association during the strike of 1934, which would be razed to build 110 The Embarcadero. That's one of a number of historic properties critics say could face the wrecking ball as new building plans are drafted. Other proposals, among them 8 Washington and 555 Washington, have neighborhood activists anxious about long skyscraper shadows that could be cast on public parks, the development pressure that would result from allowing skyscrapers to exceed height limits, and views of the bay that would be enhanced from inside luxury high rises but blocked to others.

On the other side of the coin, building-trades union members increasingly desperate for work are fervently advocating for new construction projects that would open the spigot on jobs. And the Port of San Francisco hopes development money will help cover its huge infrastructure backlog.

Meanwhile a report released in early April by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission noted that the waterfront stretch from Pier 35 to the Bay Bridge is one of the most vulnerable to sea-level rise. As plans for this part of the Embarcadero are hashed out in public hearings and architects' sketches, a new reality must be factored into the mix: some of that land could soon be underwater.



MISSING HISTORY

110 The Embarcadero initially won praise for its goal of attaining the highest certification level for nationwide green-building standards. Sponsored by Hines Interests, it was a shining example of ecodesign that even featured living vines climbing the sides. Even though it would shoot 40 percent above the allowable height limit of 84 feet, the San Francisco Planning Commission gave it a green light.

Enthusiasm waned, however, when historic preservationists pointed out that the building slated for demolition — 113 Steuart St. — was an ILA labor hall during the famous maritime strike of 1934, which erupted into violence after two union members were gunned down by police and led to a four-day general strike that paralyzed the city. "Harry Bridges rose to fame in this building," says architectural historian Bradley Weidmeier, referring to the famous labor leader. "Labor historians from around the country are going to be blocking this."

Hines hired a leading historic architecture firm, Page & Turnbull, to conduct a historic assessment of that building as part of the planning process. Yet the initial report neglected to mention anything about the building being at the center of a profound moment in San Francisco's labor history.

Former Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, an opponent of the project, says the gaps in information weren't hard to miss. "The fact that it was ground zero for bloody Thursday, that it was ground zero for the general strike ... that people were shot in front of there, that their bodies lay inside. You want to know how we found that out? We got it online," Peskin said.

Page & Turnbull later submitted an addendum, including historic photos depicting people crowding into the two-story building to pay respects to the slain union members. The firm acknowledged its historic significance this time, but asserted that the now-empty building had undergone too many retrofits to comply with historic landmark requirements.

This, too, was challenged by project opponents. "You can look at pictures of dead people laying there on the sidewalk with that building in the background, and look at it today, and godammit, it's pretty much the same building," Peskin says.

The Board of Supervisors in mid-March approved an appeal of the project and instructed city planners to prepare an environmental impact report. Ralph Schoenman, a preservation advocate who says he met with board members about the project, told us that "members of the board were plainly shocked by finding out that the historic report was so flawed and untrue."

That feeling may have lingered for some at the April 21 bard meeting when Supervisors voted 7-4 to reject Mayor Gavin Newsom's nomination of Ruth Todd, a Page & Turnbull principal, to the city's Historic Preservation Commission.



WHOSE WATERFRONT?

Though the project has been stalled, the issues it stirred are gaining momentum. The picture of what this stretch of the Embarcadero could look like is shaping up to be quite different from developers' gauzy artistic renderings. Sue Hestor, a land-use lawyer, is a driving force behind a community-led meeting scheduled for June 24 at the headquarters of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 34 (the successor to ILA) to initiate a new approach to development along the western edge of the Embarcadero.

"Threatened demolition of the 1934 Waterfront Strike headquarters at 113 Steuart has pulled us together," Hestor wrote in a widely disseminated e-mail. "The community will proactively start defining changes we want. No more waiting for a developer proposal, then meekly responding. The community gets to define how the city should look ... along the northeast waterfront. When you start at the Embarcadero it is possible to weave in so many areas, so many neighborhoods, so much of our political and immigrant and labor history."

ILWU members are joining with preservationists in the effort to preserve 113 Steuart. "We are at a historic moment when working people are under unprecedented attack," a team of six Local 34 leaders wrote in a recent statement opposing the demolition. "That living history is a prologue to our struggles of the future."

Not all labor unions agree. At a picket staged by San Francisco's Building and Construction Trades Council outside a Democratic Party luncheon April 21, protesters carried a few flew signs reading "How can we feed our kids with history?" The signs referenced the city's Historic Preservation Commission, but the same question might be asked of 110 The Embarcadero, which was favored by building-trade workers.

Neighborhood groups are also worried because the construction of the two proposed 84-foot condominium towers at 8 Washington could cause the adjacent Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club to lose half its facility. "Six hundred to 700 kids come every summer to learn to swim and to play tennis," Club director Lee Radner says. "To us, it's just a matter of the developer not considering the moral issues of the neighborhood club that has given so much to the community." Friends of Golden Gateway (FOGG), which formed to preserve the club in the face of development, has hired Hestor as its attorney.

Because the development would be partially built on a surface parking lot controlled by the Port Commission, a parcel held to be in the public trust under state law, developers proposed a land-swap to get around provisions prohibiting residential uses in those parcels. Renee Dunn, a spokesperson for the Port Commission, noted that the Port's annual revenues total $65 million, while the amount that would be needed for repairs and maintenance of its century-old infrastructure is almost $2 billion. In general, "Public-private developments provide the dollars needed to make improvements," she told us.
In the wake of concerns about 8 Washington, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu sent a letter to the Port Commission requesting an update to the waterfront plan for that area. "Concerns are currently being raised regarding the proposed development ... and the future development of seawall lots along the northern waterfront, and I share many of these concerns," Chiu wrote. In response, the Port agreed to conduct a six-to-eight month focus study for those seawall lots.

Meanwhile, a quietly growing problem may mean that plans for this stretch of the Embarcadero will get more complicated. A report released in early April by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission predicts a 16-inch rise in the level of the San Francisco Bay by 2050, and a 55-inch rise by 2100, based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Along San Francisco's waterfront, the most vulnerable area will be from Pier 35 to the Bay Bridge, the report found. "Sea-level rise has been linear, and it's continuing, and we expect that based on what we know about climate change, it will accelerate," notes Joe LaClair of BCDC. In the event of storm surges, he adds, "we will have to find a way to protect the financial district from inundation."

As local governments begin to get up to speed on mitigating the effects of climate change, new questions — beyond developers' plans vs. neighborhood input — will have to come into play. One that BCDC plans to tackle in coming months, LaClair notes, is: "What does resilient shoreline development look like?" It's a good one to start asking now.