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Posted Feb 14, 2008, 5:10 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Oakland
Posts: 3,338
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We now have a rendering of the Giant's proposal for the giant parking lot at China Basin/Mission Bay, across from the stadium:
Quote:
Giants among bidders to develop S.F. Port land
Robert Selna, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, February 14, 2008
A high-stakes competition for one of the last large tracts of San Francisco waterfront is heating up as developers submit proposals Thursday - and a group led by the Giants baseball team is already promoting itself as the only real choice.
At least three teams of bidders are expected to submit plans to the Port of San Francisco to remake the 16-acre stretch of land immediately south of the Giants ballpark into a popular destination with shops, parks, entertainment, arts, housing and office buildings.
The parcel currently is covered by a parking lot used by baseball fans on game days. But as a thriving neighborhood has emerged nearby, the Giants have seen the land as a way to stay atop the sports entertainment market that port officials hope will be a major revenue generator for the cash-strapped agency.
While at least two other development teams have quietly put together preliminary design and finance plans, the Giants created a colorful, glossy marketing kit and requested a meeting with The Chronicle's editorial board on Tuesday.
Team representatives told The Chronicle that their experience building the ballpark that opened in 2000 - also on port land at China Basin - made the Giants and their partners the most qualified to handle the complicated project.
"We're uniquely bought into this," said Larry Baer, chief operating officer for the Giants, noting that the team already had sunk $357 million and their reputations into creating AT&T Park across McCovey Cove from the proposed development site. "No one else has been able to pull off a project of this scale on the waterfront. ... We can develop this for the port better than others can."
The team and port officials also have made it clear that developers of the port property - called Seawall Lot 337 - will need parking to accommodate the new development as well as the baseball park's visitors.
The team has completed its own study of fan parking habits, and the port has said that survey will factor into how much parking is required in the new project.
The Giants' preliminary development proposal includes 875 homes, many of which will be in a 300-foot high-rise, 800,000 square feet of office space and a parking garage. The plan also features a 5,000-seat music hall, an entertainment district with restaurants, bowling and nightclubs, a 5-acre park and a refurbished pier available for staging trade shows and private events. Total development costs are estimated at more than $1 billion.
The Giants said their development team - including Cordish Co. of Baltimore and San Francisco-based Farallon Capital Management - would cover the costs of the project that they estimate at more than $1 billion. Farallon is an owner in the adjacent Mission Bay development, which includes a new UCSF campus.
While the Giants promote themselves as the best choice, an unknown number of proposals will be reviewed. The bids are to be vetted first by an eight-member advisory group and then the mayoral-appointed Port Commission. Construction would probably not begin for three or four years.
Port project manager Diane Oshima said Wednesday that she knew of at least two development teams, in addition to the Giants-led group, that had decided to submit proposals.
The first team is headed by Treasure Island developer and Democratic Party fundraiser Darius Anderson. It includes Boston Properties, which developed the Embarcadero Center, and Wilson, Meany, Sullivan, which led the Ferry Building rebuild.
Anderson said his proposal would take the Ferry Building's model of a food destination, with farmers' markets and restaurants, but use art as the draw instead for Seawall Lot 337.
Anderson, whose Kenwood Investments owns the aquarium at Pier 39, said his project would include 1,700 housing units and office space, but would also offer submarket rents for gallery space and would feature a monthly art walk for artists to show and sell their creations.
"In the United States, art has become a tourist attraction and San Francisco is one of the most artistic cities in the world, but the real estate market is pricing artists out," Anderson said.
The other known proposal is from Build Inc. and Urban Green Development. It features a green technology business incubator, offices and 1,600 homes, according to Build Inc.'s Lou Vasquez. It also includes artist studios, an art exhibition center, a wholesale market and parks, he said.
Vasquez said he doesn't believe the Giants have an edge.
"We're not worried about going against the Giants; we think we've got a decent shot," said Vasquez. "Whether it's us or someone else, we want to see the right thing there - it's a great site and we want to see it done right."
Port officials see the parcel as an underutilized revenue source that could help chip away at its $1.9 billion in unfunded capital costs by creating a public destination that would generate tax and rental income.
Two pieces of state legislation have paved the way for the port to develop the land. The first allows for housing and office development, which are generally prohibited on waterfront property in California. The second allows the port to capture 65 percent of property tax revenues in areas that the port designates as infrastructure financing districts. The money would otherwise go the city's general fund.
Port officials expect to be able to charge as much as $15 million a year on a planned 75-year ground lease for the parcel. And port officials already have identified several piers that would be repaired with the money.
The port controls 600 acres along the bay shoreline, but when the state handed off the land to the city in 1969, the city's piers and seawalls were decrepit. That situation has only worsened, and the estimated price tag to repair the aging network of rusted piers and other infrastructure has ballooned.
"This development could significantly help us address our capital costs and revitalize the southern waterfront of the city," said Tina Olson, the port's deputy director of finance and administration.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl.../BAQAV1NNV.DTL
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