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

[Pedestrian]

Planning’s preliminary review of Amazon’s plans to build a 58-foot-tall distribution and delivery station upon the Prime Showplace Square parcel at 900 7th Street, a nearly 6-acre parcel which is bounded by 7th, Berry, De Haro, Carolina and Channel Streets, has been completed. And while the review didn’t raise any red flags, it did outline a number of concerns and (non-binding) recommendations.

From Planning’s assessment:

To accommodate the mix of [Production, Distribution and Repair (PDR)], design and nearby residential uses in Showplace Square, development in the area must balance the need for goods movement with the safety and mobility of pedestrians and bicyclists.

The project site sits at the nexus of Showplace Square, SoMa, and Mission Bay…[and as] an especially large city block fronting six city streets, the project site has the unique opportunity to improve the connections between neighborhoods.

As currently designed, the Project would bring significantly more trucks, cars, bikes and pedestrians to the area without improving connections for them. The proposed design would foreclose opportunities for a walkable, urban frontage along 155 De Haro and fronting the project’s own site, should the use ever change from a last-mile facility.

Given the project’s location, size, street frontage, and goods movement activity, Department staff recommend connecting the street grid by extending Alameda and Carolina Streets. This recommendation would enhance access for deliveries, vehicles, and pedestrians and is consistent with public input to the Showplace Square Open Space Plan update.

In addition, to provide safe access between the aforementioned neighborhoods, Planning would like Amazon to add pedestrian and bicycle safety features along Berry Street. The Department is recommending that Amazon explore the inclusion of “a small retailer or coffee shop” overlooking the proposed open space, to “greatly enhance the compatibility of the building with surrounding context.” And as “the proposed number of parking spaces [at the facility] would induce a significant number of trips and conflict with City policy of prioritizing sustainable travel modes,” Planning is recommending that the proposed number of off-street parking spaces for facility staff be reduced.

https://socketsite.com/archives/2021/04/no-red-flags-for-amazons-big-project-as-proposed-but.html

San Francisco continues with the stick approach--force people out of cars by making parking them, washing them, and fueling them near impossible, and taking away as many of the traffic lanes and even streets they require as possible, rather than the carrot approach of making transit efficient, as inexpensive as possible, reliable and safe so that people will prefer to use it. It'll be interesting to see just how "progressive" Mr. Bezos really is when its a hassle for him (and his work force finds another cause for complaint, namely that they can't come to work by their chosen means).

[Pedestrian]

Meanwhile, literally up the street, there's:

Design District Lab Development on the Boards
April 28, 2021

Plans to raze the 22-foot-tall World Gym and office building, which fronts De Haro from 15th to 16th Streets, in the design district at the base of Potrero Hill, have been drafted.

As envisioned by Aralon Properties and massed below, a 5-story laboratory building would rise up to 68 feet in height upon the Showplace Square site which is zoned for PDR (Production, Distribution and Repair) use.

And in addition to 180,000 square feet of lab space, the development as proposed includes a basement garage for 130 cars, with a storage room for 19 bikes and a 17,800-square-foot roof deck for the building’s tenants.

[Now]




[Proposed]

https://socketsite.com/archives/2021/04/design-district-lab-infill-on-the-boards.html

[iamfishhead]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

If you are a sizable, youngish male who looks street smart and isn't carrying tempting "bling" including an exposed cell phone, there's no reason you should.

Fair point. I'm more average sized, but I do work out and have generally not had problems. I knew a woman who was 5'2 and lived in the Tenderloin and she was pretty vocal about how she didn't always feel safe there.

[crazy amy b]

Bling? Did we time warp back to 2003?

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by crazy amy b

Bling? Did we time warp back to 2003?

I searched for a synonym for general items of obvious value. You got one? I'll substitute it.

What happened in 2003? Didn't seem special to me as it passed (except it was the beginning of the climb out of the dot-com crash in the Bay Area).

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

San Francisco continues with the stick approach--force people out of cars by making parking them, washing them, and fueling them near impossible, and taking away as many of the traffic lanes and even streets they require as possible, rather than the carrot approach of making transit efficient, as inexpensive as possible, reliable and safe so that people will prefer to use it. It'll be interesting to see just how "progressive" Mr. Bezos really is when its a hassle for him (and his work force finds another cause for complaint, namely that they can't come to work by their chosen means).

San Francisco continues the good work of moving away from the mistake of mid-20th century auto-centricity: providing space for alternative forms of transportation on shared public roadways such as bike lanes, red transit lanes, etc.; pedestrianizing some streets to provide space for residents to be outdoors during the pandemic; upzoning auto-centric parcels in desirable areas to enable their highest economic use; and turning street spaces formerly used for the public storage of private automobiles into parklets where San Franciscans can gather and eat, socialize, read a book, etc.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by craigs

San Francisco continues the good work of moving away from the mistake of mid-20th century auto-centricity: providing space for alternative forms of transportation on shared public roadways such as bike lanes, red transit lanes, etc.; pedestrianizing some streets to provide space for residents to be outdoors during the pandemic; upzoning auto-centric parcels in desirable areas to enable their highest economic use; and turning street spaces formerly used for the public storage of private automobiles into parklets where San Franciscans can gather and eat, socialize, read a book, etc.

Yeah, yeah yeah. How do you get to your out-of-town location, teleportation? I bet you own a car. I don't (in SF) as it happens so I guess I take the moral high ground if I'm right. But still my Uber or my ZipCar need auto lanes to move in and places to gas up and park and do what they must, elitist libs like you aside.

San Francisco was designed for horses, carriages and cable cars. The past is beside the point. The overwhelming choice of San Franciscans for getting around town is cars. All the rest is fantasy. And in spite of it all, very few car-owning city residents have abandoned that mode with all the efforts of city government to make them miserable.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Yeah, yeah yeah. How do you get to your out-of-town location, teleportation? I bet you own a car. I don't (in SF) as it happens so I guess I take the moral high ground if I'm right. But still my Uber or my ZipCar need auto lanes to move in and places to gas up and park and do what they must, elitist libs like you aside.

San Francisco was designed for horses, carriages and cable cars. The past is beside the point. The overwhelming choice of San Franciscans for getting around town is cars. All the rest is fantasy. And in spite of it all, very few car-owning city residents have abandoned that mode with all the efforts of city government to make them miserable.

Okay, boomer.

If approving of San Francisco's ongoing reversal of the mistaken auto-centricity of the mid-20th century makes me an "elitist lib" then so be it. Proudly so.

[38 Geary]

I own multiple cars for trips out of the City, but my preferred method for getting around in the City is not by a car. Usually walking, biking, or riding public transit. It's a more enjoyable way to experience the City anyway.

[timbad]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

...
San Francisco continues with the stick approach--force people out of cars by making parking them, washing them, and fueling them near impossible, and taking away as many of the traffic lanes and even streets they require as possible, rather than the carrot approach of making transit efficient, as inexpensive as possible, reliable and safe so that people will prefer to use it.

I don't think it's accurate to say there is no carrot - in fact, at least some of what you perceive of as a stick *is* the carrot: giving street space over to transit, bikes and sidewalks is an effort to make those work more efficiently, safely, and pleasantly. I have appreciated it where it has happened.

we've already talked about the declining need for car fueling, so I think that is a non-issue (in fact, is probably smart planning to slowly phase out and replace with more productive uses). although maybe some thought should be given to converting gas stations to charging stations, if it hasn't already?

parking demand may also drop considerably if on-demand self-driving cars really do become common. seems we're headed that way, though this is still somewhat conjecture I think?

someone recently posted data that showed that per-capita car registration in the City is (slowly) declining, so there is that too.

[craigs]

I think the city is moving in the right direction when it comes to mobility.

[Pedestrian]

Some pics from my walk today:

Corner of Turk & Larkin (where the Kahn & Keville tire store used to be):


5M--both buildings


5M--the office tower


5M--the affordable housing


By the way, I also went by the 50 Jones building at Jones & Turk. They had 3 security guards in front to protect would-be renters from the neighborhood habitué's . . . and from the looks of things they needed them. The Tenderloin appears to me, after a 5 months absence, worse than I've ever seen it. People staggering in the street, tents everywhere and garbage, and obvious drug deals and drug use. Contrary to what I said previously about Market St, that was the most sedate side of the building by far (although the check cashing place on the corner of Jones & Market had its usual "corner boy" ready to supply your chemical cravings). I can't imagine people willing to pay the kind of rent I expect this new building will be charging to have to pass through the gauntlet on Jones they will have to to get home.

[timbad]

^ welcome back and thanks for the pics!

[twinpeaks]

Originally Posted by craigs

Okay, boomer.

If approving of San Francisco's ongoing reversal of the mistaken auto-centricity of the mid-20th century makes me an "elitist lib" then so be it. Proudly so.

I'm with you. So much public space is dedicated for car storage and traffic, it's waste of valuable resources. I'm a gen-X, but fully support public transport and use it as much as possible around the city and via BART to Oakland. I own two cars, but mainly use it for commute and trips outside the City.

[twinpeaks]

Originally Posted by homebucket

I own multiple cars for trips out of the City, but my preferred method for getting around in the City is not by a car. Usually walking, biking, or riding public transit. It's a more enjoyable way to experience the City anyway.

[crazy amy b]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Yeah, yeah yeah. How do you get to your out-of-town location, teleportation? I bet you own a car. I don't (in SF) as it happens so I guess I take the moral high ground if I'm right. But still my Uber or my ZipCar need auto lanes to move in and places to gas up and park and do what they must, elitist libs like you aside.

San Francisco was designed for horses, carriages and cable cars. The past is beside the point. The overwhelming choice of San Franciscans for getting around town is cars. All the rest is fantasy. And in spite of it all, very few car-owning city residents have abandoned that mode with all the efforts of city government to make them miserable.

Lie Lie Lie

https://sfgov.org/scorecards//transportation/non-private-auto-mode-share

But I guess that's normal behavior for elitist cons like yourself.

Imagine owning property in two different states and calling someone else elitist.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by homebucket

I own multiple cars for trips out of the City, but my preferred method for getting around in the City is not by a car. Usually walking, biking, or riding public transit. It's a more enjoyable way to experience the City anyway.

I'm in almost the same situation. I own 2 cars and 2 motorcycles. Both cars and one cycle (scooter really) are in AZ in my garage. I keep one scooter in SF for shopping and trips across town. I walk most places or Uber/Lyft--today I walked from Van Ness to Yerba Buena Park. I belong to ZipCar for when I need a full-sized vehicle (let's say I buy something bulky like a new TV).

"Public transit" is another matter. I used to be a frequent rider, buying a monthly pass and once I commuted daily on BART. But I haven't been on Muni since COVID came along and likely won't feel comfortable doing so until it's well into the history books.

At 75, biking is not a practical mode of transportation. I don't have a bike though have had random thoughts of getting one for short pleasure rides in AZ but it is not ever going to be my way to get from point A to Point B at this stage of life. And I think there are plenty of San Franciscans who feel the same way. Bikes are practical transportation mostly for the young and healthy and a large part of the city population is neither. The MTA and Planning Dept. need to remember that.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by crazy amy b

Lie Lie Lie

https://sfgov.org/scorecards//transportation/non-private-auto-mode-share

But I guess that's normal behavior for elitist cons like yourself.

Imagine owning property in two different states and calling someone else elitist.

So in your 8th post you are calling someone who's been participating here for a decade or so a liar which means, in case you are so ignorant as not to know, an intentional teller of untruths. You are rude, nasty and don't know what you are talking about. None of your posts that I've seen contributed anything to the discussion here about building so one needs to ask why you crawled out from under your rock onto this site?

Despite everything, San Franciscans are driving more
By Adam Brinklow Feb 4, 2019, 3:31pm PST

Last week, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) released its annual SF Mobility Trends Report, a regular assessment of how San Francisco is getting by when it comes to getting anywhere.

Compiled by SFMTA staff, the report assesses which methods of transit SF residents are most likely to use, employing everything from traffic counts to official ridership stats from transit agencies to Census data about bike use . . . .

Among the conclusions:

On a certain timeline, mass transit and bike use is up in SF [this was just before COVID hit]. According to the report, since 2010 San Franciscan’s use of bikes is up six percent, and use of mass transit (BART, Muni, and Caltrain combined) is up five percent, in contrast to a national trend that’s seen mass transit use decline across the United States.

However, since the turn of the century, mass transit is still down. In the longer run, SF’s mass transit use is down since 2002. In 2003 the city saw a sudden, sharp decline of over 60,000 rides per week and has never reached previous highs since, even as the population increases.

Bicycle use in the city is down in the short run. Since 2010, the number of bike commutes in the city is up, and that figure has also more than doubled since the city first started keeping track in 2005. However, the number of bike trips is also down more than 24 percent since its peak in 2015, a precipitous drop in the short term.

More often people are just driving. Since 2010, vehicular traffic entering the city is up 27 percent. “Vehicle registration per capita has declined by three percent,” says the report. “But since the overall population has grown, the total number of vehicles registered in the city have grown by six percent, adding 26,000 more vehicles.” Subsequently, congestion—measured as both average vehicle speed and peak speed—is up too.

City Hall is quick to point the finger at ride-hailing apps for much of the increased congestion. The report concludes that companies like Lyft and Uber “represent 15 percent of all intra-SF trips.” The report also says that approximately 45,000 Lyft and Uber drivers are active in the city, noting that they “account for about half of the total increase in congestion in SF between 2010 and 2016, with population and employment responsible for the other half.”

The SFMTA’s accounting does its best to accentuate the positive, noting that, despite everything and in defiance of national trends, the city’s preferred methods of transit use are indeed up over the last decade.

However, it’s still clear from the analysis that City Hall has trouble breaking San Franciscans from their reliance on cars . . . .

https://sf.curbed.com/2019/2/4/18211063/sfmta-mobility-trends-2018-2019-cars-bikes

Looked at another way,

the proportion of San Francisco households who own zero cars increased from 28.6 percent in 2000 to 31.4 percent in 2012

https://sf.streetsblog.org/2014/08/15/car-free-households-are-booming-in-san-francisco/

Turn that around and it means that in that year 68.6% of city households did own a car which, is, as I said, a majority. And that's in spite of all the inconveniences the city throws at car owners, starting with the constant risk of theft and vandalism if you don't have a secure garage to park it in. It is likely that until COVID, car ownership declined a few more percentage points but that still means a clear majority of households did own one. And since COVID, my guess would be that the trend may well have reversed, given the viral hazards of riding transit.

Finally, I went to your link and what I learned there was how pathetically few trips are actually made by bike--it appears to be just a couple of percent as I suspected (although the graph is terrible and hard to read with it's multiple shades of just 2 colors). And yet the city is gradually turning it's streets over to them.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by twinpeaks

I'm with you. So much public space is dedicated for car storage and traffic, it's waste of valuable resources. I'm a gen-X, but fully support public transport and use it as much as possible around the city and via BART to Oakland. I own two cars, but mainly use it for commute and trips outside the City.

Let me know how you get around in another 4 decades or so (how you communicate with me at that point will be up to your ingenuity).

[Pedestrian]

A WHOLE NEW SOUTH BEACH
By Laura Waxmann – Staff Reporter, San Francisco Business Times
Apr 29, 2021 Updated Apr 29, 2021, 7:19pm PDT

In less than a decade, a roughly half-mile, barren stretch of the San Francisco waterfront described as a “dead zone” in the city’s South Beach neighborhood will be unrecognizable.

That, at least, is the hope of the Port of San Francisco and two teams working independently but on parallel trajectories to redevelop two sets of dilapidated piers.

The vision is to transform that stretch of waterfront — flanked by the Bay Bridge and Oracle Park — into an urban dining, shopping and recreational destination while also strengthening the port’s aging infrastructure.



Roughly 13 acres across Piers 30 and 32 — home to a city-operated Covid-19 testing site for the last year — are earmarked for a full rebuild into a floating swimming pool framed by two new office structures. Across Embarcadero Street from the piers, 850 multifamily units would rise on an underutilized parking lot where a homeless navigation center operates.

Strada Investment Group and financial partner Trammell Crow Co. are leading the $1.2 billion proposal.



Further south — next to South Beach Harbor and Oracle Park— Piers 38 and 40 are slated for redevelopment into office space, recreational and commercial boating facilities and an Asian-inspired food market. That $383 million project comes from Pacific Waterfront Partners LLC.

The Port selected both teams last summer after competitive bidding processes . . . .

The public floating swimming pool, the project’s signature, was inspired by examples in Europe.

“There are great examples in northern Europe, and there’s also one on the Seine in Paris,” he said. “San Francisco doesn’t have anything like this. So we thought that would be a great way to attract a whole bunch of new people from around the region to this part of the waterfront and really activate the site.”

The details are still being worked out, but Blout envisions the pool or pools would come in the form of a steel or concrete barge that floats in a tub in the bay. That would allow them to better control the water quality.

“We are playing around with whether we can use Bay water in the same way that the Exploratorium uses bay water to cool the Exploratorium,” said Blout. “They have this heat exchange process where they take the bay water into the building through a series of pipes and cool the building. What we’re thinking is we could potentially use that technology where we heat the office buildings and then use the water to warm the pool, maybe also combined with some solar panels.”

A third try at Piers 38-40
Pacific Waterfront Partners’ third attempt to redevelop Piers 38 and 40 could be the charm. The development firm was selected following two unsuccessful flirtations with the site . . . .

Snellgrove said that equity and affordability are principles guiding his firm’s proposal for Piers 38 and 40, which combined span about 252,600 square feet.

Rather than paying minimum rent, eight restaurants envisioned to operate on a 30,000-square-foot existing parking lot-turned-plaza covered by a large canopy on Pier 40 will pay percentage rents based on their sales— meaning that as the businesses do well, the revenue will be shared with the Port and PWP. The restaurants will not be subject to common area maintenance charges as is typical for businesses operating in Port facilities. In return, the restaurants must agree to cap their price points . . . .

The Pavilion-style food market is inspired by Asian outdoor night markets, such as the Stanley Market in Hong Kong. The Cornerstone Institute is partnering with PWP on the project . . . .

The plaza will also be programmed for events, and the current proposal features two bayside pools that would be free to the public. One may be swapped out for a volleyball court, depending on community feedback. Take a look at the current state of the piers and the vision for them in the gallery below . . . .

Strada’s proposal calls for roughly 700 market-rate and affordable inclusionary units in one building and an affordable building with 150 units. Because restrictions at the piers limit the project’s office space, Blout said the city will use the state density bonus program to boost density, generating “enough development envelope” to pay for the public infrastructure improvements. Two corners of the proposed housing development would exceed local height limits . . . .

Amato believes that Strada’s proposal would suffice in activating the neighborhood with more restaurants, shopping and other amenities — and questioned the demand for both projects at South Beach stretch of the waterfront . . . .

As for the Port, it says both are doable: “The projects are complementary and will offer a wide mix of new open space, access to the waterfront and other amenities for the public. The projects are advancing on different timelines and are not expected to have significant overlap in construction. Additionally, much of the construction is expected to be over water mitigating some construction inconveniences.”

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco...-francisco-port-starda-trammell-pwp.html