I went to a meeting today held by SPUR called "10th & Market: A War Story," during which Jeff Heller (of Heller Manus) spoke about the difficulties of getting this project approved, even though it was seemingly a shoe-in.
I'm sure it's already been said here, but the first thing I guess I should mention is that Jeff Heller said there are no remaining civic process hurdles that can obstruct construction. They are currently "a few months" away from construction. However, he did mention Sue Hestor (whenever she was mentioned, the room would erupt in sarcastic laughter - needless to say, it was a pro-tower crowd), and said that she could try and appeal the approval, but Heller said that even if she did, they had a strong case against her.
The interesting thing about his presentation was that 10th & Market has essentially been zoned for a tower of this height since about 1971. That year the city created a proposal of various height limits in certain parts of town, and the 10th & Market area was included as a "node" of downtown (it is literally right outside the Market/Octavia zone). He proceeded to show the addition of the new tower from various different vantage points around the city, and how it fit in very well with the neighborhood height wise. It was all pretty well laid out in my opinion.
The bulk of the presentation was about the major problem they ran into before they got approval, which was the Comprehensive Wind Study. A wind study conducted by UC Davis came back that said that the structure would greatly increase wind in the area. And I mean a huge difference, based on the numbers he showed in his slides. Heller said that he and his firm were having a collective aneurysm, as they couldn't understand how the building was creating that much of a wind increase, especially since they had designed the building to prevent this. Apparently bulidings that have a round facade like this one, help deflect wind around a building, as opposed to a rectanglur building (a la Fox Plaza) which pushes wind down & up, thereby increasing wind speeds and discomfort for pedestrians. The wind problem was so severe that the Planning Commission said they couldn't build it. Not to be outdone, Heller Manus hired the most renowned wind study firm in the world, some firm called RWDI out of Toronto. They ran advanced computer simulations of the entire area to determine how the building performed, and the computer models showed much less wind effect. Eventually, UC Davis, RWDI, and some other firm corroborated the findings, essentially giving a gold seal of approval to the tower's design, and the Planning Commission still had "questions." They apparently didn't want to accept the wind study because they archaic planning code didn't take into account computer simulations. The whole point was to show how the PLanning Commission wants all these advanced studies done, but the Planning Code itself is so far behind that what the Planning Commission wants and what the Code dictate are actually very different. And that just makes the process that much more difficult and slow for developers who want to bring a project to fruition.
Anyways, they finally got the building approved, but it was incredibly difficult and onerous, especially considering that the building complied with all regulations for that parcel (meaning, they weren't introducing anything radical).
The building is:
1) all apartments - i talked to Jeff about this, and he said that it wasn't any demand by the planning commission, it was just converted from condo to apts b/c of current market economics.
2) LEED certified - not silver or gold or anything, just certified. Some of his slides showed a simple green roof on top of the building (nothing ornate or extravagant though, and I don't think it covered the entire roof either).
3) will have a small plaza at the corner of market & 10th.
4) 19,000 sq ft of retail all along the market street front and 10th street front
5) Will have a parking ratio of approximately .7 per unit.
6) meets the affordable housing requirement, and contains it on site.
Heller concluded his presentation by saying that the city is definitely changing. In response to a question by an attendee asking about how much opposition there was to the project, he said that the project had almost no opposition at all (Sue Hestor notwithstanding). But he said one of the many reasons for the different attitude is that people increasingly view SF and the Bay Area as part of a global economy, and that the city has to compete. He also singled out the new and younger generation of SF and Bay Area residents who are standing up and saying that we belong on the world stage.
He ended by showing Transbay Tower, and how its transforming perceptions of SF, and he also showed his 900 ft 181 Fremont proposal (i really wanted to ask him about that, but by the time i remembered he was already swamped by like 10 people).
That was about it. Pretty interesting actually. 1 hour long in total. 45 minutes in presentation, 15 minutes in questions.
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