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Originally Posted by SF Business Times
In the late 1960s, Alvin Dworman was a force on Cathedral Hill, a neighborhood-changing developer who built Cathedral Hill Tower, Cathedral Hill Plaza and assembled the site for the area's defining landmark, the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption, built in 1971.
Now 40 years later Dworman's Adco Group is again looking to put a defining stamp on the neighborhood. The developer is proposing a $230 million, 407-foot elliptical condominium tower at the hill's apex, a ghostly white glass structure that would be visible from much of the city.
Adco has hired Skidmore Owings & Merrill to design the 38-story building, which SOM design partner Craig Hartman described as a light and luminous "bell tower marking the presence of the cathedral." The new tower would be built at 1481 Post St., adjacent to Cathedral Hill Plaza, a 169-unit rental property.
The project would also include 6,000 square feet of retail and a 5,000-square-foot cultural space, which the developer envisions as a cultural and educational space modeled after the 92nd Street Y in New York.
"We've come full circle back to where we started," said Linda Corso, general manager of Cathedral Hill Plaza.
A new direction
The project comes at a time when Cathedral Hill activists are organizing to oppose a massive new California Pacific Medical Center hospital proposed for the eastern edge of the neighborhood. Adco faces a challenge in convincing neighbors -- already feeling under siege -- that the development's subtle design and public amenities will offset added density or blocked views.
SOM senior designer Leo Chow argued that the project is a chance for Adco to correct some of the design mistakes made when the neighborhood was developed. At the time, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency pushed a plan that moved automobile traffic through the area at the expense of pedestrians.
The 1481 Post St. plan calls for the building itself to be spun around, so its main axis points not straight out but to the entrance of St. Mary's. Hartman says the elliptical tower "is making a deferential gesture to the cathedral." This will break up the "imposing urban wall" to create space for a large public Japanese garden along the south side of Post Street. With 36 stories of housing, the first two stories will be a glass-clad transparent base of retail and community uses.
Chow said the tower is consistent with the city's long-standing policy of trying to define the hills with tall buildings.
"The idea of building an iconic tower on top of the hill seems appropriate," said Chow. "It's a very sleek, simple form you can identify from different parts of the city."
Corso said the developer started looking at the site two years ago and brought on SOM last summer. On March 9, Adco filed an application for environmental evaluation with the Planning Department. The developer has just started reaching out to neighborhood groups like the Cathedral Hill Neighborhood Association and the Japantown Task Force, according to Corso, who said 60 residents attended an initial meeting April 19th.
The building would be 407 feet tall. Current zoning allows 240 feet, which Chow calls a "an unfortunate, squat, blocky thing."
The development site is now occupied by two tennis courts, a swimming pool, and both above-ground and surface parking. Under the new plan, the parking would be moved underground and the swimming pools incorporated into the new development.
Dworman is a former close associate of the Pritzker family, the billionaire hoteliers and philanthropists based in Chicago, but fell out with the family in 2001 after a bank they owned jointly failed.
Based in New York with offices in San Francisco, Adco owns 1.3 million square feet of commercial space in San Francisco. It has developed the Normandy Apartments on Ellis Street, Museum Parc at 300 Third St., and owns SF Mart, 875 Stevenson St., and Convention Plaza.
And Dworman and Adco are no strangers to neighborhood battles. In 2000, the developer opened Bacara Resort and Spa outside of Santa Barbara, a ultra deluxe project that took 17 years of legal battles to entitle and build.
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