SAN FRANCISCO | Projects: Under Construction, Approved, and Proposed

[jpdivola]

Originally Posted by wakamesalad

I do like 8 Octavia from Octavia St., but this view of the building, as seen from the freeway offramp, and the first thing that thousands of daily visitors to SF see, is very.. ugly. This was a huge mistake to let this building be built like this at this corner. Damn..

Looks terrible in photos, no doubt about it. Any chance there will eventually be a taller building to the right of it to draw some attention away?

Perhaps with some surrounding infill and a little bit of time this will settle into just being an ugly, but unremarkable background building. NYC, Paris, etc all have tons of terrible buildings that just get lost in the surrounding chaos of the city.


EDIT: I see someone commented that the lot next door is zone for 85 ft. So that will help.

[fflint]

It doesn't just look bad in photos--it looks and feels bad on the street. Really terrible outcome on that project.

[cv94117]

Originally Posted by fflint

It doesn't just look bad in photos--it looks and feels bad on the street. Really terrible outcome on that project.

Still like it better than that abomination NEMA - which will never be able to hide.

[viewguysf]

Originally Posted by fflint

That said, people who arrive by freeway cannot possibly complain about aesthetics. Period.

As much as I've respected your comments for a very long time, I can't let this one go. Let's get off of the elitist cyclist remarks--many people arrive in SF by car, including over both bridges, and it definitely matters what we look like! With that having been said, I've never see 8 Octavia from that angle since I've obviously not arrived via car there. I've walked by it and seen it many times from Market Street where it looks...interesting?...at times. This view is atrocious. I've complained about much of our architecture many times, but our beloved City often earns and deserves it.

[mt_climber13]

Yes, an awkward comment. Who cares what 98% of the people who arrive to the city (via roads and freeway, buses, cabs, rental cars) think. We must only impress all those people biking here from Portland, right? Lol

And the BART stations are much worse than this freeway exit. Didn't they have to shit down an escalator because all the poo gummed up the mechanics?

I really like 8 Octavia above street level, facing west. The rest of the building has awkward concrete and plastic looking separations that look very hastily planned. But, overall, I think it's a pretty cool building. The louvres are really eat and useful. The glass is great quality.

[POLA]

Originally Posted by wakamesalad

Yes, an awkward comment.

No, it's not. There's no arguing that freeway are ugly as shit (unless your a traffic engineer from 1950). That's all he was getting at.

Originally Posted by wakamesalad

Didn't they have to shit down an escalator because all the poo gummed up the mechanics?

Freudian slip?

[viewguysf]

[QUOTE=POLA;6673008]No, it's not. There's no arguing that freeway are ugly as shit (unless your a traffic engineer from 1950). That's all he was getting at.

The Bay Bridge is part of a freeway as is the Golden Gate Bridge. 280 is not ugly for most of its length. I'm no fan of freeways, especially in cities, and I really hate 101 down the Peninsula, but come on. Many surface streets in many places are ugly too, as are views from railroad tracks, etc.

[minesweeper]

J.K. Dineen has a story about the looming Prop. M office space crunch, and how it's already pushing new proposals towards housing:

For the first time in nearly 15 years, San Francisco's most powerful commercial developers are gearing up to face off in a competition to win the approvals needed to construct the city's next generation of office buildings.

The problem is that while there is no shortage of demand at the moment - companies like Google, LinkedIn, Dropbox and Pinterest seem to have an insatiable appetite for expansion space - developers are bumping up against Proposition M, a 1986 San Francisco voter-approved law that caps the amount of new office space allowed at 875,000 square feet per year.

[...]

"We are not discouraging new office applications, but we are letting people know it's not just first come, first serve anymore," he said. "It's only fair that we look at these projects as a whole."

The looming cap crunch is already sending developers back to the drawing board on major SoMa projects. At Fourth and Townsend, Tishman Speyer is proposing to build upward of 1,000 housing units on a property that is home to two restaurants, the Creamery and Iron Cactus, as well as the furniture showroom HD Buttercup.

Here's the current status of Prop. M limits: http://www.sf-planning.org/Modules/S...ocumentID=9276

The City went from having over 5.1 million square feet in the bank during 2012-13 to about 2 million now. Another 875,000 gets added to the pool on October 17th each year. According to that PDF, the 50 First Street project will consume more than a year's worth, over 1 million square feet, on its own.

[simms3_redux]

That 875,000 SF includes 75,000 allowable for "small" office projects under 100,000 SF and 800,000 SF available for "large" office projects.

That PDF is great and really makes it clear how it works.

[biggerhigherfaster]

if these office projects get converted into housing (e.g., 1000-2000 units), that might end up being a good result; we desperately need more housing downtown and around the city generally. It might also turn the downtown core into a place that's more active at all hours

[a very long weekend]

it's a tough call. it's an obviously bad rule that will surely harm economic growth, but the housing argument is a good one. i see a cartelism forming here where groups of developers collaborate to game the system so that everyone can get along - all moving similar sized projects forward or whatever to run just under the cap. i also see underbuilding of valuable land as we say with the foundry projects, because building something is better than building nothing. i see city hall giving priority to some projects over others, which could be good or bad depending on how they do this (approving transit first-friendly projects without parking, for instance over others, would be a plus), and we could see more mixed residential/commercial tower projects as developers try to jigger to get at least some office built.

and it'd be great to get more residential built in the soma - but, again, given how important that area is to the city's economic vitality, this is pretty short-sighted. like, there are very few areas in sf to build a 500,000 sqft office tower, so burning those on residential seems sort of nuts, everything considered.

[Crackertastik]

Rendering is out for the new TMG/Northwood Two tower development near the Transbay site on 1st and Mission. Looks very cool. Second tallest coming to SF. And tallest residential tower of the west coast.

http://m.inhabitat.com/inhabitat/#!/...5312186c360a0c

Designed by Foster + Partners

[fflint]

Originally Posted by Crackertastik

Rendering is out for the new TMG/Northwood Two tower development near the Transbay site on 1st and Mission. Looks very cool. Second tallest coming to SF. And tallest residential tower of the west coast.

http://m.inhabitat.com/inhabitat/#!/...5312186c360a0c

Designed by Foster + Partners

We already discussed this proposal when it was first revealed. Check out the huge renderings a couple pages back, they are truly awesome.

Also, remember both towers are now going to be mixed-use. That means the First Street tower will be the tallest mixed-use residential tower west of Chicago. The Wilshire Grand tower currently under construction in Los Angeles will be the tallest mixed-use (office and hotel) and the tallest overall tower west of Chicago.

[rriojas71]

Originally Posted by Crackertastik

Rendering is out for the new TMG/Northwood Two tower development near the Transbay site on 1st and Mission. Looks very cool. Second tallest coming to SF. And tallest residential tower of the west coast.

http://m.inhabitat.com/inhabitat/#!/...5312186c360a0c

Designed by Foster + Partners

The article states that the taller tower is going to be 850ft instead of the 900+ft tower from sicketsite. Can anyone confirm if this is just to the roof and doesn't include the crown?

[fflint]

This late-coming little blurb from a website I've never heard of--"Inhabitat"--has no special access to, nor provides, any special new information. Indeed, it seems to have gotten some of the details wrong.

The taller tower will be 910' with the crown. The shorter will be 605'. Both are now going to be mixed office and residential.

[tech12]

Originally Posted by rriojas71

Can anyone confirm if this is just to the roof and doesn't include the crown?

Confirmed. The tower site is zoned for 850 to the roof, and that article apparently has it confused with the total structural height.

[1977]

Renderings of 2177 Third. Simple, clean, looking good.

...109 new units with with waterfront views, courtyard gardens, and a now-ubiquitous rooftop terrace. Renderings from architecture firm Woods Bagot have just been released and show a seven-story building that draws its inspiration from the neighborhood's industrial past, especially through the use of materials such as bronze-anodized aluminum and metallic-fritted glass.

More renderings and info at sf.curbed.com

[fflint]

Dogpatch has really been filling in--especially between Third and Illinois.

My Dad knows a septuagenarian SF native who relocated to the suburbs a couple decades ago who cannot recount ever setting foot in Dogpatch. It's kind of a point of pride for my Dad, but to be fair, it really is a 'new' neighborhood even though it is the original port. Nobody, generally speaking in the last century, lived there or had any reason to go there except for work.

Nowadays--it's hot.

Personal plug: "Just For You" has the best beignets in the City!

[peanut gallery]

Looks like it would take the rest of the block. Next to Pier 70 too. Nice project.

In other news, The San Francisco Business Times reports that Transbay parcels F (space between 540 Howard and the corner that will be a park someday and is currently being used for construction staging) and 4 (north part of the temporary terminal) may get sold long before they're available, which is 2018 at the earliest.

Reminder of what's in store for these two parcels (from the article):

Parcel F is a 32,700-square-foot site slated for up to 735,000 square feet of office and residential space in a tower up to 750 feet high. Block 4, a 43,000-square-foot site, could accommodate up to 590 units of housing.

Given how hot things are now and knowing that it never lasts, this would be a good time to sell these parcels. I wonder if someone will be willing to pay now, knowing they can't recoup their investment for at least 4 years?

[peanut gallery]

Here's a shot taken today of the new control tower at SFO: