Posted May 1, 2009, 5:37 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: San Francisco & Tucson
Posts: 24,088
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Quote:
Friday, May 1, 2009
SPUR moves into iconic new home
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen
SPUR finally has a home that lives up to its lofty ideals.
The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association moved this week into a its new SPUR Urban Center at 654 Mission St., $18 million modernist structure that is one part office, one part community meeting space, and one part urban research center with changing exhibits on planning and architecture.
With four floors of multi-purpose space squeezed into 14,000 square feet, the building, designed by Peter Pfau of Pfau Long Architecture, is a physical embodiment of SPUR’s goals of smart growth, green building, and transit-oriented development.
In addition to raising SPUR’s profile, the building creates a venue for planners, builders, architects, politicians to come together and discuss the future of the city.
“This is a city that likes to fight,” said SPUR Executive Director Gabriel Metcalf. “We wanted to create a place for productive conversations, a neutral meeting ground where people can come together and figure things out.”
It has not been easy. SPUR, which has 3,500 members, has been raising money at a time when real estate industry is in shambles and many of its core members -- architects, planning, and development firms -- are going through layoffs. The organization still has to raise about $4 million to pay for the new building. SPUR has a $2.5 million budget and about 17 employees.
“SPUR is a nonprofit so there was no gilding of the lilly,” said Pfau. “When I got the job I referred to it as the little building that could.”
Jim Chappell, SPUR’s former executive director who is now director of the organization’s citizen planning institute, said the idea of the new building came out of discussions in 1999 during SPUR’s 40th anniversary celebration.
At that time he was talking with architect Diane Filippi, then a principal at SMWM, about how San Francisco needed a urban planning center similar to the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris.
“She said, ‘let’s find a little site on a good retail street with existing parking and good bus service and take planning retail in San Francisco,”
said Chappell. “SPUR has been famous for its debates but the organization has always been largely invisible in our little fifth floor office.”
SPUR brought Filippi on board to head up the urban center effort. They looked at a site on Market Street and talked with Tishman Speyer about putting SPUR on the ground floor of 555 Mission St., an idea that was scrapped when that building was put on hold.
The center, constructed by Nibbi Brothers, officially opens with a donor party on May 27th and a an all member party on May 28th. The illuminated glass front features a two story window and an enormous SPUR was still being installed last week.
“What we said was we want to be open and light and airy and as transparent as we believe government should be,” said Chappell. “And indeed it is.”
jkdineen@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4971
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Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...4/story15.html
"Iconic"? Well--maybe that word should be given a rest until the recession is over. But it IS nice (if short).
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Agreed. For years, I've walked past that lot and daydreamed about the day that something would be built there. Glad to see my dream is coming true 
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