Transbay Blog

Land use is famously about local controversies. Neighborhood groups, often brandishing long, unwieldy names like “Citizens For A More Responsible” something-or-other, fill up municipal legislative chambers demanding justice; other distinctly local personalities may also emerge into the forefront of the discussion. In addition, land use decisions are often based on a context made up of such fine microscopic detail that it would unproductive or impractical for the state or federal government, both presumably inexpert in those details, to intervene. A local government thus enjoys relatively complete autonomy over how land within its domain is used, subject to only limited requirements issued at the state or federal level.

But one major exception to that general rule is housing. The State of California requires that General Plans contain a set of elements, which lay out a blueprint and policy direction to guide future development. Among those elements, the Housing Element is singled out as special, in that it must be updated every five years in accordance with the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA). The state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) and ABAG will project the number of housing units that the Bay Area will need to accommodate for the next several years, at four income levels (very low, low, moderate, and above moderate), and then will assign a housing share to governments throughout the Bay Area, ensuring that the region, as a whole, meets the required total. Each local government then updates its Housing Element every five years, specifying how it will accommodate its share of the regional housing need. Cities throughout the Bay Area have been engaged in this process this year.

This process ensures that local governments plan to accommodate housing units that are accessible to a range of income levels. Without such a procedure in place, it’s easy to imagine what could happen. Many cities — whose elected officials might simply translate the parochial demands of a local NIMBY group into something resembling legislation — would shirk on their obligation to ensure the production of housing units, particularly affordable units. They might, for instance, amend the zoning code to contain a set of requirements that are a proxy for wealth, ensuring that only affluent citizens can afford to live there. Other cities might freeze growth altogether, thinking only of what will happen within their city limits and ignoring what the effect would be outside. The point is that without a state mandate prohibiting that sort of behavior, it would be difficult or impossible for California to accommodate, in a just and equitable fashion, a population that is projected to increase to 60 million by the year 2050. The state has an enormous interest in ensuring that all of its citizens, of all income levels, are safely housed; but accomplishing this goal requires the cooperation of local governments, who, after all, are empowered to control land use through zoning.

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The Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC) manages about 1,800 residential units for very low-income tenants, and it is currently pursuing several new residential projects in the Tenderloin and nearby South of Market locations, in the form of both new construction and reuse of historical buildings. Among the new construction projects is a trio of buildings that will add almost 350 new homes to the block bounded by Ellis, Mason, Eddy, and Taylor Streets on the east side of the Tenderloin. Two of those three buildings fill a gap in the streetwall on the west side of Mason Street. Construction of 125 Mason (pictured at left), the offsite affordable housing for the Millennium Tower, was recently completed as a result of a partnership with Glide Economic Development Corporation; it adds137 units ranging from one to four bedrooms. The multi-bedroom units will provide much-needed housing for the dense concentration of families in the Tenderloin. 149 Mason, which will be an eight-story 56-studio building to house the homeless, is currently under construction on the parcel next to 125 Mason.

Eddy and Taylor; courtesy of David Baker + Partners.

The third building in this trio, 168-186 Eddy/238 Taylor, is planned for the northeast corner of Eddy & Taylor, where it would replace a 22,334 square foot surface parking lot. The building would be about 130 feet tall and mixed-use, potentially with a grocery store on the ground floor that would improve the neighborhood’s access to fresh food and produce. The Planning Department has issued a Preliminary Mitigated Negative Declaration (link to 8.2 MB PDF) explaining its determination that the project does not require an EIR to evaluate significant adverse effects to the environment. The analysis in that document assumes a building containing up to 178 units, and the project website contemplates 143 units (44 one-bedroom, 77 two-bedroom, and 22 three-bedroom) at a density of 280 units/acre. The project would provide the required bicycle parking, but would have zero off-street car parking, for both the residential and commercial components. The emphasis on multiple bedrooms indicates that, like 125 Mason, Eddy & Taylor is especially geared toward housing low-income and homeless families in the Tenderloin. The architect is David Baker + Partners, who also designed the 67-unit Curran House, another TNDC property just south of the Eddy & Taylor parcel. Additional renderings of the Eddy & Taylor project can be found at the project website.

Mt. Diablo, courtesy Flickr user qf8.

In August 2006, the California legislature passed the Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), and the Governor approved it one month later, on September 27, 2006. AB 32 aims to transform California into a global leader in the climate change battle, requiring that greenhouse gas emissions levels be reduced to 1990 levels by the year 2020. AB 32 charges the California Air Resources Board (CARB) with several tasks, including: (1) adopt and enforce regulations that require the reporting of emissions; (2) create a scoping plan to provide a strategy for reducing emissions; and (3) adopt and enforce regulations that achieve AB 32’s emission reduction mandates. AB 32 requires that CARB adopt such regulations via an open public process. It further requires CARB to consult other state agencies, particularly the Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Commission, and it encourages CARB to study other emissions reductions programs, both domestic and foreign, when crafting its own plan.

We will need to implement a varied array of programs to achieve AB 32’s targets, but transportation accounts for over 40% of greenhouse gas emissions statewide, and almost 30% of emissions come from automobiles and light trucks — so reducing transportation emissions is a major piece of the puzzle. Of particular interest here is how smart land use and transportation planning can be implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the face of California’s projected population growth. Legal challenges will provide the mechanism by which CARB’s AB 32 regulations can be enforced, so the momentum has been building to enact state legislation that will strengthen the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to make it a more effective tool for enforcing AB 32.

Enter SB 375, authored by Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). First introduced in February 2007 and passed just last week by the state legislature, SB 375 now awaits the Governor’s signature. SB 375 is a complicated, multifaceted bill, but its overall message could not be clearer: transportation, housing, and land use — although traditionally placed in different thought boxes — are, in fact, closely intertwined, and the intersection area should be leveraged as a powerful tool to protect the environment and reduce emissions. In that sense, SB 375 is rightly hailed as a landmark piece of legislation.

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Courtesy San Francisco Redevelopment Agency.

If you read the two previous posts about this past election, you probably noticed one rather glaring omission from the discussion: the two San Francisco measures that were actually about city planning, Propositions F and G concerning the massive redevelopment of the Hunters Point Shipyard and Candlestick Point. Unfortunately, after writing those other two election posts, there was no time to write a post about Hunters Point as well. But one thing is pretty certain: there will be opportunity in the future to discuss the landmark redevelopment of this area of the City. As you have likely already heard, 62% of San Franciscans voted “No” on the 50% affordable housing mandate in Prop F, while an almost equal number of San Franciscans voted “Yes” on Prop G, signalizing a desire to move forward with the cleaning up and redevelopment of this Superfund site. (Link to SF Election Results, scroll down to the bottom for city measures.)

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Courtesy Central City Extra.

St. Anthony Foundation has been an institution in the Tenderloin for decades, providing shelter, daily meals, clothes, as well as medical and social services to San Francisco’s homeless since 1950. St. Anthony (headquartered on the southern side of Golden Gate Avenue, at Jones) will move many of its services into a new five-story building across the street (at 150 Golden Gate) that is set to be completed next month. The second phase of St. Anthony’s renewal aims to completely replace the current structure at 121 Golden Gate. The plan for the redone 121 Golden Gate originally included a new dining facility and just 17 permanent units of senior housing, along with 17 medical discharge units. But the latest proposal for 121 Golden Gate, to be carried out in conjunction with Mercy Housing, is a $66 million project that could include not only a more spacious dining facility, but is also planned to feature 90 studio and one-bedroom units in a 10-story building, with no parking. The building would rise to the full ten stories on the corner, stepping down to eight stories on the side to match the height of Boyd Hotel next door. The latest incarnation of 121 Golden Gate could join 990 Polk and 55 Laguna as another major project featuring construction of new housing units for seniors, and the project could be delivered as soon as 2011.

A busy week prevented me from posting about this earlier, but better late than never: as you may have already read in the Chronicle, there have been favorable updates at the Board of Supervisors concerning the Market & Octavia Plan, which I addressed in a post a couple weeks ago. Supervisors Mirkarimi and McGoldrick had articulated competing visions for the contentious issues of affordable housing, parking, and density in the Market & Octavia plan area: more details are provided in that linked post. But the two proposals have since coalesced into a single compromise plan. Thankfully, Mirkarimi’s stricter parking requirements survived, helping to ensure that the Market & Octavia Plan maintains livability at its heart; the compromise also adopted Mirkarimi’s affordable housing funding plan, which set forth a tiered impact fee (of $0, $4, or $8 per square foot, depending on the location of the development) and the opportunity for developers to contribute to the citywide affordable housing fund in lieu of TDR fees. However, the compromise incorporates McGoldrick’s density cap, which will apply not just to Duboce Triangle, but to all blocks zoned as Residential Transit-Oriented (RTO), which includes most of the residential blocks deeper in the plan area, off of Market Street. These amendments were passed at first hearing at the Board last Tuesday, finally drawing some consensus on this comprehensive plan that has been highly contested in recent months.

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Courtesy Stanley Saitowitz / Natoma Architects, Inc.

For several years, the City of San Francisco has worked to develop the Market & Octavia Neighborhood Plan, studying neighborhoods centered on the pivotal intersection of Market and Octavia, bookended by Church Street on the west and Van Ness Avenue on the east. The plan was one part of the Better Neighborhoods 2002 effort — a sadly ironic name, because a mere 365 days is nowhere near sufficient to start and finish such a large-scale planning process, particularly in San Francisco. In some areas covered by the Market-Octavia plan, one has the impression of being in an unclassifiable neighborhood that is nonetheless quite close to favorite, well-established locales. The plan encompasses an area historically known as “the Hub”, so named for the Muni turnaround located there, and the neighborhoods contained within the plan area continue to evolve and come into their own, coining names like Deco Ghetto to reflect both an emerging identity and broader acknowledgment of that identity. Other parts of the plan area, including Hayes Valley, already enjoy established commercial districts but have been given a new chance to blossom since the retreat of the Central Freeway to the south side of Market Street.

It is also in this area that the slanted South of Market street grid curves and reorients into an arrangement that reflects the cardinal directions, adjusting to form the Mission/Castro grid. This is a departure from the pattern firmly established all the way from the Ferry Building, resulting in a suspension of the security resting in the predictable pattern of downtown streets. But some clever planning could take advantage of this insecurity and transform it into a distinctly urban sort of excitement, in which even the unsuspecting pedestrian would be smoothly guided by intuitively navigable streets designed for humans, rather than for the sole function of moving automobiles efficiently.

Market-Octavia is exactly the plan that aims to knit these disconnected neighborhoods together into a more unified and walkable set of districts that San Francisco could rightly be proud to call its own. The plan reflects thoughtful cooperation between community members and city planners. This vision was not forcefully hoisted upon neighborhood residents; rather, the goal was to achieve a consensus. It simultaneously blends a respect for the eminently livable residential scale of San Francisco’s most beloved neighborhoods, while advocating for a forward-thinking vision of elegant density graced by moving examples of contemporary design, like the Octavia Gateway pictured above — a building that provides a splendid answer to the problem posed by the narrow, awkward parcel of land on which it would sit, at the northeast corner of Market and Octavia.

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Because most of the general interest in the Transbay redevelopment process seems to focus, quite understandably, on the Pelli Transit Center and its signature tower, it is easy to forget how much planning is required to deal with the rest (really, most) of the redevelopment zone — now-vacant lots once occupied by the Embarcadero Freeway, mostly located north of Folsom, with a couple slivers to the south. To jumpstart the various threads of the greater development process, each of these former freeway parcels will be treated to a separate RFP. Building a neighborhood from scratch in modern times is no easy task, and even small, peripheral parcels should be lavished with as much care and attention as we can give. Currently up for consideration is Block 11, whose RFP is in the drafting stage. Hugging the eastern corner of Folsom and Essex, Block 11 (outlined in red in the Google satellite image at right) is a more peripheral site, in the sense that it is not slated for a tower or a particularly high density of new homes. But to current and future residents of the neighborhood, it could prove more controversial than new additions to the skyline.

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Filling in Taylor Street. The Business Times reports today that the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. is taking on another fairly high-profile low-income housing project, having acquired the 22,000-square foot surface parking lot at the corner of Taylor and Eddy Streets. The TNDC plans to build a project very much in the mold of their project currently under construction at 125 Mason, one block away from the Taylor/Eddy site — that is, housing specifically designed to accommodate the Tenderloin’s high concentration of families. The building, which will include a play area for children, is planned to be roughly the same size as 125 Mason, with 130 units on 13 floors. The plan also includes a grocery store on the ground level to provide the neighborhood with immediate access to fresh food. The project will be designed by David Baker + Partners, who also designed the nearby Curran House.
[San Francisco Business Times]

Time for another construction update! The last construction progress post mainly focused on buildings that were recently completed or are very near completion, so this post will cover many large projects that are not as far along yet. As usual for these posts, you can click through each picture to see a larger version. The full-sized versions are hosted on my Flickr account.

631 Folsom, a.k.a. BLŪ, is a 21-story building in Rincon Hill with narrow floor plates — just half a dozen units on each floor, for a total of 120 units, along with ground floor retail. The image on the left is the rendering, and the image on the right depicts the current state of construction:

Left image courtesy Handel Architects.

One of the future shining beacons downtown (at least, until the Transbay Tower is built) is 301 Mission, better known as the Millennium Tower. The Millennium is a 645-foot condominium tower designed by Handel Architects, located at the northern end of the Transbay Terminal. Here are two images of this tower. The image on the left is a rendering, and on the right is a construction picture:

Left image courtesy Handel Architects.

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