Posted Feb 4, 2020, 3:03 PM
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heavy user of walkability
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: Mission Bay, San Francisco
Posts: 3,150
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Temp TB Terminal
John King on the former Temporary Terminal site plans
Quote:
Filling in this final block “will really tie everything together,” said Joshua Switzky, a program manager with the city’s Planning Department who wrote the district plan, which was approved in 2012. “When everything is built, it will be the center of gravity for the residential neighborhood.”
The district plan envisions something more compelling — splitting the block rimmed by Howard, Main, Folsom and Beale streets into three horizontal zones, with a park bookended by housing complexes.
Along Folsom there’d be roughly 250 units in mid-rise buildings for low-income residents. The block to the north is zoned to allow a residential tower as part of a complex that would hold both market-rate and affordable units.
Plans for the block are now being reviewed by the city’s Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure.
The development team of Hines and Urban Pacific proposes a 47-story high-rise at Howard and Main streets, with a 16-story wing extending to Beale Street. The complex would hold upward of 700 units, as many as half of them reserved for low- and middle-income buyers. It’s an unusually high amount that includes the affordable units required at the Howard Street tower approved last month, another project planned by the team.
Long story short: As you near the city via the Bay Bridge or ferries, this tower would signal the new skyline almost as much as Salesforce Tower.
... the initial design filed with the city in May is promising, with a steep sculpted rectangle wrapped in a deep grid of copper-toned metal. The top 50 feet facing the bay would notch back roughly 15 feet, a small gesture toward the city’s edge.
... the proposed tower is 50 feet higher than the zoning allows. It’s bulkier, especially facing west, and no renderings from the all-important bay perspective have been released.
The height isn’t a problem. The bulkiness is ominous. Planners reviewing the project also need to ensure that the honeycomb-like metallic skin doesn’t get scrapped because of construction budgets.
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Landscape architects with San Francisco Public Works will spend the next year working with neighbors to design the new park in the middle third of the block ...
... said Andrew Robinson, executive director the East Cut Community Benefit District, a group funded by area property owners: “We’d love a small neighborhood space for people to gather. ... A kids’ play area will be critical.”
Makes sense: 250 low-income apartments already front the site, and the tightly wound white Mira tower designed by Jeanne Gang will bring 392 market-rate and affordable condominiums across Main Street when it opens this spring. Add the 900 units planned to the north and south, and it will be hard to conceive that all these sites held on- and off-ramps before the Embarcadero Freeway was demolished in 1991.
The neighborhood will also get extensive street improvements funded by fees that Transbay developers have paid as part of their project costs.
Construction crews already are remaking Folsom Street with wider sidewalks. One of the city’s first sets of two-way protected bicycle lanes will be added to Beale Street beginning this summer. Other pedestrian-friendly upgrades aren’t far behind.
Assuming the economy stays strong, all of Transbay could be completed by 2025. That’s a hectic pace, but so far the results are pretty good
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