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Thanks PB. So that pretty much confirms my thought that the shadowing of a 1200' tower on JHP is, at worst, a minor nuisance for a couple of months a year. I'd sure hate to see much-needed funding for the new terminal disappear because of that (ie: Hines lowering their bid with a shorter tower).

Well the Chronicle's Editorial and Public Opinion pieces are out:yuck:
SSP people need to write in. the comments are rediculous!
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/

Up, up, up to the future?

Friday, May 2, 2008
San Francisco is making a momentous decision on its downtown skyline. Planners want to push growth upward by hundreds of feet and into a ring around a new transit hub on lower Mission Street.

The dreams are bold and exciting. But the risks for a small-scale - and self-conscious - city are important to ponder. Imagine a half dozen Transamerica needles surrounding an even taller 1,200-foot skyscraper, the highest on the West Coast. At the feet of these towers will be an underground bullet train to Southern California and other terminals for buses to the East Bay and rail service down the Peninsula.

It's a winning image of a bustling, booming downtown. But it comes with risks: windy concrete canyons, potentially humdrum designs, and dark, crowded sidewalks. The city's challenge will be expanding its downtown but with distinctive, human-scale designs. The results better be more than extra square footage at the cloud level.

The economics underlying the package may also be a problem. A high-speed train line and underground tracks running into the heart of the area aren't guaranteed and will cost billions. A future statewide ballot measure for the train could spell success or failure for the San Francisco link.

The city has prepared itself for high-rise expansion in recent years. It blessed blueprints for condo towers along the Bay Bridge waterfront, most prominently the 62-story Rincon tower within arm's reach of bridge traffic lanes. Last fall, the city chose a 1,000-foot-tall winner from four contenders for the center of the Transbay Terminal high-rise target zone.

It's a future that fulfills a decades-old picture of a compact urban center, built on transit, green-building technology, and soaring skyscrapers to sustain business growth. There's also a generational factor: this city that famously fought high-rises now greets even-bigger versions with little protest.

These are powerful factors that should guide a new downtown neighborhood taking shape. The challenge will be keeping this vision on track.

This article appeared on page B - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Hulking towers wrecked the city's charm
Friday, May 2, 2008
Editor - At this point it is irrelevant whether or not city planners override existing zoning ordinances to enable as many as seven new skyscrapers to surpass the current 550-foot height limit in and around a new Transbay tower ("A new skyline on S.F. horizon," May 1).

Not all that many years ago, even into the 1970s and very early 1980s, San Francisco was a great walker's town. The streets not only had a human scale, the buildings had an individuality and character that made walking in downtown a truly unique pleasure.

No more. San Francisco has "successfully" transformed itself into a security-guarded trash heap of me-too office towers. The city's once charming sidewalks and once unique skyline now resemble those of any other of America's interchangeable-part metropolises.

The sad, even tragic, fact is that we've already thrown the equivalent of acid on the face of what was once one of the world's most beautiful and interesting cities. Why should we suddenly pretend we care what happens next?

RILEY B. VANDYKE

San Francisco

Editor - Of all the examples of architecture-speak gobbledygook I've encountered in The Chronicle over the years (and there have been many) one of the arguments put forward for increasing the height limits on office towers South of Market is truly worthy of a "Bullitzer" Prize ("A new skyline on S.F. horizon," May 1).

I'm referring to the assertion that there has been a "flattening-out" of the skyline because towers already built "have formed a sort of plateau in the air" that can only be corrected by even taller towers on the order of the Transamerica Pyramid.

If there is a plateau in the air, it is the city of Oz where these architects dwell, dreaming up buildings to fatten the wallets of developers and politicians, while the charm and livability of the city is flattened.

HILLEL RESNER

Lafayette

Wow, those are two doozies. If a flattened skyline at 600' is gobblygook (hey Hillel, I don't think there's a "d" in that non-word) to you, I don't think you should be commenting on the skyline. There's a lot you can criticize if you'd like, but the plateau is there and anyone can see it. It's hardly some developers' insider jargon.

I was pleasantly surprised with John King's take this morning. He has a reasonable view of the proposal and highlights the issues we should be concerned about: good design for these new buildings, sidewalk interaction, protection of smaller worthy/historic buildings in the area.

I guess I should post the article.

Quote:

Life on the ground key to new high-rise area
John King, Chronicle Urban Design Writer
Friday, May 2, 2008

If San Francisco planners have their way, a whole new neighborhood will grow up - literally - south of the traditional Financial District.

And here's the punch line: It could feel a lot like midtown Manhattan.

Swarms of pedestrians would navigate corporate plazas at the foot of glassy peaks. The wide grid of streets would be filled with cars much of the day, but a fair number of better-paid workers would be within walking distance of their high-rise homes.

This isn't the apocalyptic "Manhattanization" that local critics railed against back in the 1970s, when they warned that tall buildings would usher in blight and decay. This type of neighborhood can exude a dynamic urbanity that pulls housing close to office space and transit, all threaded by attractive strands of open space.

But unless care is taken on the ground, it also could be a dark, congested realm - no matter how the new buildings look from afar.

Given all the talk about a new skyline in recent years, there was a sense of anticlimax to what was unveiled Wednesday night by the San Francisco Planning Department.

Yes, the proposed zoning would allow seven towers to exceed the current 550-foot height limit. They would emerge from the existing clutter to form a sort of allegorical mound topped by a 1,000-foot tower at the Transbay Terminal site at First and Fremont streets.

Under this scenario, the summit would be 150 feet taller than the Transamerica Pyramid, San Francisco's chart-topper since 1972. The flanking towers would be roughly as tall as the skyline's current runner-up, the 779-foot Bank of America building.

The idea also is to space things out, with at least 200 feet of open air between the towers once they reach the heavens.

"We think it's quite graceful," project manager Joshua Switzky said as he toggled through images of phantasmic silhouettes from such perspectives as Twin Peaks and Treasure Island. "We want to maintain and accentuate the downtown form, with the apex at the Transit Center."

As far as skyline aesthetics go, loosening the reins makes sense. Since the new towers would top off today's thicket of 400- to 600-foot high-rises, they wouldn't disrupt views that before were wide-open. They're also proportioned to build on what exists, rather than stick out like steroid thumbs.

At some point, the computer images morph into real structures of steel and concrete and glass, filled by thousands of workers and residents.

Here's where things get tricky.

Besides the obvious accents on the skyline, the proposed rezoning raises heights more "modestly" in other locations. There's space for a 400-foot tower connected to the Palace Hotel on New Montgomery Street, for instance, and a 450-foot shaft on Howard Street next to where a 700-foot tower is allowed. On Tehama Street - an alleyway - zoning would allow a 350-foot tower.

None of them is a skyline-popper. None of them would cast shadows on distant parks. At some point, though, the cumulative effect at street level could be overwhelming. Instead of cool towers providing contemporary accents, we'd have oversaturation.

Canyons of sleek glass.

The danger is most pronounced at the corner of Fremont and Mission streets.

Right now, there's a 600-foot office tower from 1985 on the northwest corner and, kitty-corner to it, a 650-foot residential tower that opens next year. On the northeast, the proposed height is 700 feet. And southwest? That's the Transbay site, where planners want their 1,000 foot centerpiece.

No matter how spread out the peaks might be, we would suffocate down low.

As the debate over the district moves forward during the next 18 months (or more) before there's a vote at the Board of Supervisors, it's essential that a balance be struck on the ground as well as in the air.

To their credit, planners are emphasizing the need for wider sidewalks in several locations and midblock crosswalks in others to create an urbane realm.

During the next few months, they also need to spell out how buildings on larger sites connect with the street. Instead of sheer cliff after sheer cliff, for instance, some high-rises could be tucked back on podiums of just three or four stories. Their bases would relate to the existing terrain of lower, older buildings, allowing breathing room at ground level while their towers soar toward the sky.

The neighborhood also needs strong protections for the masonry buildings that retain a flavor of its blue-collar past. Some are obvious landmarks. Others are disposable. With the ones in-between, it's best to err on the side of preservation.

Anyone who has visited midtown Manhattan in recent years knows how exhilarating it can be - a fast-paced world of gleaming stabs at the sky and jam-packed pocket parks, frenetic moments and inlets of calm. They also know the spots where it's all too much, a daunting press of construction where there's little hint of a world beyond.

San Francisco shouldn't be afraid to grow, and grow up. There's also no need to change it into something else.

For more information on Transbay area planning studies, go to transitcenter.sfplanning.org.

E-mail John King at jking@sfchronicle.com.

Quote:

Originally Posted by peanut gallery (Post 3525614)

Now if someone can just come up with a practical sunlight diversion system of optical mirrors and lenses aiming light that would be otherwise be missing from JHP, and place it on the top of a 1200' or taller version of the Transbay Tower...

"It could feel a lot like midtown Manhattan"

Oh, the humanity! The horror!

Get out the Batman movies and see the future. Or maybe Bladerunner!

San Francisco 2015:

http://media.bladezone.com/contents/...6_Refinery.jpg

Silly NIMBY's. What do they think San Francisco is? A small fishing village? Also all the whining about potentially dark, crowded streets downtown seems misplaced. It's downtown. It's not like the neighborhoods are losing their charm or something. 90% of the city is still "human-scale," and I didn't know skyscrapers ruined walkability (how is that even possible?). Plus half of the NIMBY's don't even live in SF.

When they think "skyscraper" they think this:

http://www.focusmag.gr/id/files/190788/mordor.jpg

Again, from one of the recent John King articles posted above:

Quote:

"The reaction in the past was from some who didn't want San Francisco to change from being a smaller city to one that had international stature," Macris suggested. "People will talk about it a lot at first, and then they'll get used to it."

We can't really change other peoples opinions and tastes any more than we can change some of ours. Some want San Francisco to be more of a charming small European fishing village, while others want it to be more of a shinning bold world-class metropolis. We can site fictional extremes, - Coruscant and Mayberry, for instance - but maybe that is a little too extreme. I think it is better that we compromise to something that is more reasonable that works.

^^^Just as tastes in architecture vary, tastes in "working" vary. San Francisco isn't working for me when it's hard to buy a supper after 9 PM or a snack after midnight. It doesn't work for me as an overgrown small town because real cities offer 24 hour services for 24 hour people. And that takes a certain density. If you want things open after 9, you need enough people out and about after 9 to create the demand and make it worth the while of enough restauranteurs. That's what density does and in San Francisco there isn't room for sufficient additional density without additional height.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rocketman_95046 (Post 3525660)

Hulking towers wrecked the city's charm
Friday, May 2, 2008
Editor - At this point it is irrelevant whether or not city planners override existing zoning ordinances to enable as many as seven new skyscrapers to surpass the current 550-foot height limit in and around a new Transbay tower ("A new skyline on S.F. horizon," May 1).

Not all that many years ago, even into the 1970s and very early 1980s, San Francisco was a great walker's town. The streets not only had a human scale, the buildings had an individuality and character that made walking in downtown a truly unique pleasure.

No more. San Francisco has "successfully" transformed itself into a security-guarded trash heap of me-too office towers. The city's once charming sidewalks and once unique skyline now resemble those of any other of America's interchangeable-part metropolises.

The sad, even tragic, fact is that we've already thrown the equivalent of acid on the face of what was once one of the world's most beautiful and interesting cities. Why should we suddenly pretend we care what happens next?

RILEY B. VANDYKE

San Francisco

That's patently absurd--this guy's a closeminded idiot! The majority of the "hulking towers that wrecked the City's charm" were built in the 70's. What about all those boxes on Market Street, some extending through to Mission? 333 Market, Bechtel and others are among the worst crap built here. Wake up Riley VanDickhead--we shouldn't pretend to care, we should actually care. If you don't care or like walking here in what still is one of the world's most beautiful and interesting cities, move to Reno, Peoria, Ashtabula or anywhere else.

Quote:

Originally Posted by quashlo (Post 3522425)

Also, the NE corner of 2nd and Howard would be converted to a park, as the historic buildings that currently occupy that corner would have to be demolished for construction of the Caltrain extension. This park is proposed to connect to the park on top of the Transit Center, as well as a pedestrian and bike path along the western span of the Bay Bridge.

I wanted to come back to this because we had some discussion several weeks ago about buildings at the southeast corner of Second and Howard that might be demolished for the Caltrain extension.

If one has to go, I hope it is the northeast corner, because it looks like this:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3147/...a3d88782_b.jpg

Nothing wrong with it, but nothing special either. The southeast corner, on the other hand, includes these buidlings:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2114/...968a841b_b.jpg

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/4788/img0403on1.jpg

One caveat: I hope they don't go too far up Second street with the demolition, because just out of frame of the shot of the northeast corner, it gets much more interesting:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2275/...35a0fb07_b.jpg

PS: I hope I'm not taking this thread too far off topic.

I'm glad to see that this thread has come back to life for the mean time...

If the NIMBYs end up successfully cutting the TB tower's height down for their precious hour of mid-winter sunlight in Justin Herman Plaza, I just hope that we can have a final height of at least 1,019 feet (hopefully some of you can figure out why) :cool:

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryBarbierSRPD (Post 3527610)

I believe the Library Tower is 1,018 ft. to its structural height (including crown and helipad), right? Wikipedia has the top floor at 967.5 ft. If I read the articles above correctly, Transbay should still be permitted to have 1,000 ft to the top floor roof plus another 100-200 for the crown/wind turbines.

I wonder, however, if they would really make Pelli redesign the whole building for a 65-foot reduction in height? (1,065 roof to 1,000). I'm not sure how much time/money that would take, but it seems unnecessary and the transit center may risk a revised offer from Hines.

Quote:

Originally Posted by viewguysf (Post 3527507)

Amen to that. Its these people that really put a halt to our growing ambitions. They act like the whole city is about to be transformed into some sort of super skyscraper city. This plan is only happening downtown, and a small part of it at that. Even Reno is embracing growth as I've seen some pretty big proposals there. I dont know about Peoria as I didnt go that far south when I was in Chicago, heh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlobeTrekker (Post 3527750)

I believe the Library Tower is 1,018 ft. to its structural height (including crown and helipad), right?

You win!:D

BEAT LA!!!:banana:

I was talking to my mom today about this proposal. She is a native San Franciscan and she seemed to have a few concerns about these big towers (I don't think the phrasing in the local press helped)

I explained my support for these towers and tried to give it context by explaining many of the ideas supported in this board about the environment, sprawl, economic competitiveness, transportation etc.

Putting this in context and explaining that the battle to save places like North Beach have already been won but this is a new era and these plans are more thoughtful really gained traction with her. She gets it now

People need to get the word out about this to help people see the big picture. This is a naturally conservative town when it comes to growth and allowing the market to work but the time is here. I am going to write to my supervisor to express my support and as much as possible I am going to spread the word to every friend and relative that I can

Is it just me, or does the overall plan feel more like downtown LA than Chicago's Magnificent Mile? Remember this from an older TJPA/SF Redevelopment presentation?
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...ridProgram.jpg
Can you imagine if the presentation showed images of downtown LA instead? I know this isn't really the intention, and probably not how it will really look when built, but I still get that feeling of LA heights anyway right now. We still need to respect the law. Are there any other cities that have an unshadowed openspace law?

Highlights from: http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfi...sit_center.htm (Presentations & Project Materials - April 30, 2008)
There are a few surprises if you look carefully.

What is currently being proposed:
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...sfo/TI1000.jpg

What has been proposed:
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...fo/TI1200P.jpg

What is currently being proposed:
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...fo/HTS1000.jpg

What has been proposed:
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...o/HTS1200P.jpg

What is having an effect on the proposal:
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...fo/EMBSHDW.jpg

What can be added to the proposal:
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...o/BLDGTOPS.jpg

The first proposal with the 1000' tower is really nice in its self, though when compared to the 1200' one it of course looks a bit underwhelming.

As for the 1200' one it looks amazing, though I gotta say the 1200' piano towers look a little out of place as they create a steep drop off to the much shorter towers to the north. Plus, they just create another "tabletop effect" as they're right next to transbay.

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