[BTinSF]

Transbay tower plans unveiled, mountain of feedback follows
John King
Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Whatever you think about the idea of a new cloud-piercing tower in the sky above San Francisco, here's one incontrovertible fact: People are paying attention.

Certainly that was the case last week at City Hall, where for two days the Transbay Joint Powers Authority displayed images of the three competing bids to build a 1,200-foot tower that would help pay for a new transit hub - also to be designed by the architect-developer teams - on the site of the existing Transbay Terminal at First and Mission streets.

More than 1,000 citizens entered the exhibition next to City Hall's rotunda to pore over models and drawings. There often were more than 50 people in the room, and 604 of them took the time to fill out comment sheets.

As for the authority's Web site ( www.transbaycenter.org), it crashed the evening of Aug. 6 because of all the traffic. The next day it received 65,000 visits - exponentially busier than a typical day. All comments handed in on paper or submitted online will be forwarded to the authority's Board of Directors before Sept. 20, when it's scheduled to select a team for the job. So you still have time to weigh in.

No matter which team gets chosen and what actually gets built, the Transbay competition already demonstrates how environmental awareness has entered the development mainstream.

Competition rules required an emphasis on green design, to be sure. But each proposal seems designed to woo Al Gore - from the subterranean geothermal energy that all three proposals would tap, to the spinning turbines that would crown each tower as a means of converting wind into energy. (And yes, they're bird-friendly turbines.)

"The importance of this issue has finally become real across the board, especially in the Bay Area," says Craig Hartman of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, the architecture firm paired with Rockefeller Group Development Corp. on one of the schemes. "There are government incentives to do highly effective green buildings, but we're also having developers of high-end condominiums and office space say they want to take green initiatives."

Besides the large-scale stabs at sustainability, each team makes smaller moves. The Skidmore design goes so far as to include compressed and recycled plastic in portions of the structure to reduce the need for concrete. And the 5.4-acre park included atop the terminal proposed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects and the Hines development firm doesn't just look good; its artificial streams would filter water from the adjacent buildings.

Another nice twist: Projects of this size are mandated to have large budgets for art, so the Pelli team brought an artist in from the start - hiring Sebastapol environmental artist Ned Kahn to design the metal screen and wind turbines atop Pelli's 80-story office tower as well as a fountain that would spill from the rooftop park into the terminal.

Place appears on Tuesdays. E-mail John King at jking@sfchronicle.com.

Source: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg.../DDMERH6OS.DTL

Note the link to the TJPA web site above. If you are a skyscraper fan, and especially if you are a fan of the SOM design ( ), please take a moment to submit a positive comment--one urging them not to shorten the design. You don't have to be a resident of San Francisco.