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

[hi123]

Wow! I've been looing for a rendering of 77 for months! Thanks BT! It actually looks like a solid well designed building, just like 818!

[nequidnimis]

Not the rendering I had seen before, but a great rendering as well: Very contextual, and yet distinctive.

[peanut gallery]

Originally Posted by BTinSF

While Turnberry has leased a sales office for its 227-unit tower at 45 Lansing, it shows no sign of actually building out the sales office, which is likely to take nine months.

Even more troubling, the space they leased is also supposed to house their construction office. I walk by there at least once a week, sometimes peering in the windows, and have seen absolutely nothing happening. Nada. A sales office is one thing (it won't be needed for awhile), but they'll want their construction offices in place before starting work. Granted it won't take 9 months to get a construction office ready, but it's the next visible sign onsite that construction might begin soon and it ain't happening yet.

In my humble and novice opinion, ORH2 will be the last work we see on Rincon Hill in awhile. I'd like to hope that by its completion, 45 Lansing or one of the Fremont properties will get started. But I'm not optimistic.

[BTinSF]

I'm not quite as pessimistic as that. For one thing, I don't think they need a construction office to do the excavation which takes at least 6 months typically. The excavator probably won 't even be the same company as the builder.

[peanut gallery]

Now, I'm Mr. Doom and Gloom.

Lets move back to smaller projects that are underway. Here's the latest from One Kearny showing how it fills the streetwall:


I'm hopeful these notches will add interest to the facade:


This is what it looks like from the Geary side:

[peanut gallery]

It's not new construction, but the renovated One Ecker finally had the wraps removed:


This will be a great place to live if you want to live right in the FiDi:


There's still a little scaffolding up:

[BTinSF]

Friday, July 11, 2008
S.F. tower developer GLL goes to green extreme
Transbay action fuels new $220M highrise
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen

In the latest sign that Mission Street continues to thrive despite the economic downturn, GLL Development & Management is pushing forward with a 27-story tower at 350 Mission St., a super green design that could be the first San Francisco skyscraper to use non-biodegradable materials like plastic bottles and Styrofoam in some places instead of concrete.

GLL, which also built 199 Fremont St., hopes to win planning approvals on the $200 million Mission Street building by early 2009, which would allow for construction to start in mid-to-late 2009, according to company President David Wall. The developer will start marketing the building late this month and is seriously considering building on a speculative basis.

"Right now my charter is to have it partially pre-leased, about 30 percent," said Wall. "However, it is possible that I will get approval to go spec. If the city gave me approval today, I would push very hard to go spec because I think we're in the right cycle."

The new tower would replace a five-story building Heald College occupies on the corner of Mission and Fremont streets. If the tower is built without a tenant in hand, it would be the third speculative tower rising within two blocks of the proposed Transbay Terminal and Tower along the burgeoning Mission Street corridor. Tishman Speyer is expected to complete its 550,000-square-foot 555 Mission St. at the end of this year, and Beacon Capital Partners received permits July 2 to start driving piles at 535 Mission St., which will be just under 300,000 square feet. Six months away from opening, 555 Mission is over 50 percent leased, with DLA Piper, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, and Sequoia Capital all signing significant deals.

At 27 stories, the 340,000-square-foot building proposed is shorter than the current 550-foot height limit allowed and dramatically less than the 700 feet the proposed Transbay District rezoning would allow. But with its relatively small lot -- about 19,000 square feet -- a higher building doesn't work economically, Wall said. Going beyond 27 stories would require a second elevator bank and force GLL to increase the "load factor" -- the non-leasable portion of the building dedicated to elevators, restrooms and mechanical rooms -- from 20 to about 30 percent.

"It just doesn't pencil," said Wall. "Believe me, I wish it did. Everybody wants more height. Give me a larger parcel, and I'll get more height."

The green approach

While all proposed new office buildings in the city are striving for certification from the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, GLL says it is committed to achieving a gold rating and hopes to create one of the first carbon neutral commercial buildings on the West Coast. Besides environmental provisions that are becoming increasingly common -- such as providing bike parking, harvesting rainwater, and creating HVAC systems that only heat and cool areas that are occupied -- the developer is hoping to use a new material Skidmore Owings and Merrill engineers are developing called a Sustainable Form Inclusion System. The system takes post-consumer recycled materials -- everything from plastic bottles to old recycled tires -- and uses it instead of concrete to fill voids within the superstructure and foundation. "Throwaway" materials, such as Styrofoam or plastic bottles, which would normally sit in a landfill for centuries, both decrease the weight of the building and add additional strength.

In 350 Mission St., the recycled materials used would be equal to approximately 5,400 cubic yards of concrete -- equal to 600 truckloads or enough to lay approximately 20 miles of residential sidewalk, according to Wall.

"David came to us looking for something unique and looking to create something great," said Masis Mesropian of Skidmore Owings and Merrill, who is designing the building with colleague Craig Hartman. "I think it's going to be a wonderful urban space."

A special public realm

What the building may lack in height, the developers are hoping to make up for with pioneering sustainable features as well as a dramatic public space at the street level. The design lifts the first floor of office 50 feet above grade, creating a spacious public lobby with 90 linear feet of space that will open up to the street, when weather permits, with folding glass panels. A glass and wood "grand staircase" will connect the ground floor with an additional mezzanine level facing the street, where an upscale restaurant and bar will open onto the existing plaza at 45 Fremont St.

"We are trying to blur the line between what is the public realm and what is the private realm," said Wall.

As an extension of the grand staircase, the architects have created a stepped amphitheater within the lobby allowing informal lunchtime dining and special event viewing. Digital lighting and metallic scrims will create an "ephemeral cloud-like effect," and video art installations will be projected in the lobby. A retail pavilion will be housed in a two-story translucent glass oval, lit from below and culminating in a floating cloud-like roof on which images, visible from the lobby, will be projected. The developer is also looking into lobby benches that automatically move. Bold statement

In addition to SOM, the development team includes engineers Flack + Kurtz and Cornish & Carey Commercial. Cornish & Carey's Nick Slonek, Karl Baldauf and John Cashin are handling the leasing of the building.

With the Transbay Tower slated to rise catty-corner from 350 Mission and the Millennium Tower under construction across the street at 333 Mission St., Wall said it was imperative to make as bold a statement as possible with the tower.

"It's a pretty powerful intersection surrounded by very tall buildings," said Wall. "It almost looks like it's in a bowl. Everything is converging on Fremont and Mission because of the new Transbay."

Given the size limitations of the site, the plan seems to strive to make the lobby "as gracious as possible," said senior planner David Alumbaugh.

"I do think they are working hard to connect the inside to the outside and activate the public space to make it seem as public and open as possible," he said.


[email protected] / (415) 288-4971

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/07/14/story3.html?t=printable

To make up for the lack of height . . . . I like the sound of that. His heart's in the right place.

The site--per http://www.socketsite.com/

[BTinSF]

Friday, July 11, 2008
California Pacific Medical Center forced to think small
Med center's $1.7B plan may hinge on St. Luke's
San Francisco Business Times - by Chris Rauber

California Pacific Medical Center, backed into a corner by recommendations from a blue-ribbon panel on salvaging its St. Luke's Hospital, must now design a new 60- to 80-bed version of the now 140-bed Mission District hospital that won't be an economic basket case.

In large part, insiders say, success on that front will depend on CPMC gaining swift support from San Francisco officials for its proposed $1.7 billion, 555-bed Cathedral Hill medical campus at Geary Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue.

"Time is money. There's an urgency here to fast track both this hospital and the Cathedral Hill hospital," said Stephen Shortell, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, and the panel's chairman. That will require "the continued support" of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the mayor's office, Shortell said, noting that all the key players "understand the interdependencies here."

If the huge new Cathedral Hill project moves through the city approval process quickly, Shortell suggested, CPMC could save many millions of dollars in construction inflation costs it would otherwise incur. But without that fast-tracking, the compromise solution could fall apart.

"It's kind of threading the needle," he noted, "but we're optimistic."

Shortell and CPMC officials agree the new plan only makes sense because the new St. Luke's would be part of an integrated system that includes other campuses, support capabilities and financial resources. "This would be dead at the beginning if it were a stand-alone, free-standing hospital," Shortell said.

CPMC hopes to move much of its citywide inpatient services to the new Cathedral Hill complex, shuffling other services among St. Luke's, its Pacific campus in Pacific Heights, California campus in the Richmond District and Davies campus in the Castro District. Judy Li, St. Luke's chief administrative officer, agreed that the panel's recommendations can only work if the new St. Luke's is envisioned as "a portal of entry to the CPMC system," fully integrated into CPMC 's overall planning.

Planning for that has already started internally, she told the Business Times on July 8, although it's still unclear exactly what services and departments would be part of a rebuilt, slimmed-down St. Luke's.

The 31-member panel -- which included representatives of key labor unions, CPMC, the mayor's office, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, various local politicos and other community, health-care and business groups -- recommended early this month that CPMC build a smaller facility to replace the aging 143-bed structure (including 66 acute-care beds), focusing on preventive, senior and family care. But it also insisted that the facility include an emergency department, an ICU, urgent care and medical-surgical care. That would make the rebuilt St. Luke's a full-fledged hospital, subject to all the regulatory requirements hospitals face. San Francisco Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier estimated the new facility's cost at $120 million, but at the Bay Area's approximately $2.5 million-per-bed recent average, a new St. Luke's could check in at $160 million to $200 million, if it included 80 beds.

CPMC -- and parent Sutter Health -- faced severe political pressure to accept the panel's recommendations because the Cathedral Hill hospital's fate is in the hands of the Board of Supervisors, which in turn is heavily influenced by labor unions, especially the politically powerful United Health Care Workers West local, part of the Service Employees International Union.

Sal Rosselli, president of the Oakland-based local, has long made it clear that UHW sees Cathedral Hill's future as dependent on a satisfactory resolution at St. Luke's, and other issues important to the union.

Earlier, CPMC CEO Martin Brotman, M.D., dug in his heels and insisted that St. Luke's days as an acute-care center were over, and that it should be converted to an outpatient hub for CPMC in the South of Market area. He also insisted that CPMC couldn't afford to continue subsidizing St. Luke's, arguing that Sutter has invested close to $300 million in the facility since 2001, including improvements and accumulated financial losses averaging $35 million a year.

But political reality has apparently dictated otherwise. San Francisco "is a pretty unique landscape" politically, St. Luke's Li acknowledged.

CPMC is working to schedule a special board meeting on the issue, which is expected to happen "as soon as possible," according to Li. Brotman was not available to comment on the situation.

[email protected] / (415) 288-4946

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/07/14/story2.html?t=printable

Anybody want to lay odds on the city not screwing this up?

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by BTinSF

Anybody want to lay odds on the city not screwing this up?

I just really want the nasty-pedestrian-hating Cathedral Hill Hotel to bite the dust soon, so I really hope nothing delays the new hospital at Geary/Van Ness. That's my least favorite block of Van Ness to walk on, just because there's a good chance that you'll be mowed down by a car exiting one of the garages speeding through the curb cuts...

[BTinSF]

I want the nasty building on Geary between Van Ness and Polk that I used to work in to bite the dust. My former employer sold it to CPMC which plans to build on both sides of Van Ness (hospital on the west, offices on the east) with a tunnel connecting them.

[Reminiscence]

Nice tidbits there BT, definitly some exciting projects in the works. Its too bad 350 wont be as tall as we thought, but the description given about the lobby and such makes it all for the better. I'd apreciate it if CPMC had an easy time going through the city as well, but I wont hold my breath.

[livin' in the city]

Sounds like there are renderings for 350. I would love to see those if anybody out there can get their hands on them.

[JAC6]

As to 350 Mission, here are some additional shots of the existing building to get some context, particularly as to 301 Mission and 50 Fremont.

[BTinSF]

818 Van Ness now has a web site: http://www.theartani.com but there's not much there. Not even a rendering.

But it does tell us this will join Arterra and Argenta in the Ar.... group of condo names. What's with that?

[CityKid]

. . .is coming out of the ground. This rendering is from socketsite.com:



Here are photos I took today:

[Gordo]

They need to just build up and not worry about taking down that BMW ad - that way when I'm old and one of the buildings is coming down, we'll have an old picture of a "gas-powered car" to show all the young whippersnappers

[c1tyguy]

For those of you who have yet to make it over to SocketSite, here is a rendering of 350 Mission:

[POLA]

oh hell yes...

[Reminiscence]

Thats a gorgeous rendering, one that deserves more than one view. This may seem like a pedestrian-like question, but in order to maximize height, why dont they make this into a mixed-use building with residential on top of office?

[BTinSF]

Originally Posted by CityKid

. . .is coming out of the ground. This rendering is from socketsite.com:

Ah, so that's the crane I see looking way up Larkin as my bus crosses it. Assuming it was another 9-story T-Loin infill (they are sprouting like mushrooms), I never bothered to walk that far up to look. But it IS nice looking--in some way it looks a lot like 818 Van Ness.