Quote:
Originally Posted by tyler82
This from the latest Chronicle
"The current skyline is very flat, and needs some peaks to create a more distinctive look,'' city Planning Director Dean Macris said.
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You want peaks...I'll give you peaks!!!!!
Massive new project being proposed for San Francisco
San Francisco Business Times - 3:21 PM PST Thursday
by J.K. Dineen
A development team led by the Solit Interest Group is proposing to build a
1,200-foot tower at First and Mission streets, part of a quartet of astoundingly ambitious buildings being designed by superstar architect Renzo Piano.
The proposed building, which would dwarf any existing buildings on the West Coast, would be part of a 2.9 million-square-foot development that would include 600 condominiums, 470 hotel rooms, and more than 520,000 square feet of office space, according to an application filed Dec. 21 with the city.
The 1,200-foot proposed skyscraper, which would be the third tallest building in the United States, would lag only Chicago's Sears Tower, which is 1,450 feet, and New York's Empire State Building at 1,250 feet. San Francisco's tallest current building is the Transamerica Pyramid, which is 853 feet tall.
The 51,000-square-foot development site on the northwest corner of First and Mission streets was assembled by David Choo, the president of California Mortgage and Realty. Over the past two years, Choo has acquired four buildings on First Street between Mission and Market streets as well as three adjoining vacant parcels on Mission.
Last summer Choo brought on Mark Solit to head up the development team. Solit was a developer for the Hyatt Corp. and was also involved in building Embarcadero West at 275 Battery St.
The buildings -- 50 First St., 62 First St., 76-80 First St., and 88 First St. -- would be demolished under the proposal. They are all small, Class C office buildings with a combined square footage of 250,000.
At current construction costs, the project would cost more than $1 billion to build.
Piano, who designed the rebuild of the California Academy of Sciences now under way in Golden Gate Park, is a highly sought-after international superstar architect. He's behind the expansion of both the Whitney Museum in New York and the High Museum in Atlanta has public and private projects in Sydney, Tokyo and Paris, but recent American commissions have made him a familiar and golden name in the United States.
"He's certainly one of a very short list of preeminent architects in the world that have a significant body of work," said David Meckel, director research and planning and former dean of architecture at California College of the Arts. "He's done a lot of buildings and almost everyone of those building responds to place. No two look alike."
The proposed development would be made possible by a planned upzoning of the Transbay Terminal area that is currently under review. In July, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority agreed to a plan to build a trio of soaring towers that would help fund a new Transbay Terminal as well as a funding and phasing plan for the transit hub.
The zoning changes could bring as much as $250 million in new funding to the terminal project, according to the work of the planners.