Transbay Blog

I recently had occasion to check out some of the new projects under construction in downtown Oakland, so this post will provide a pictorial update of the construction reported in this post from last October. This post will be mostly photos; for more context and details on the projects, please check out that earlier post.

First, the inimitable Cathedral of Christ the Light at Grand and Harrison:

Below, the left picture shows that the large Uptown project is coming along nicely. The right picture shows the 78-unit Jade at 1511 Jefferson (completed last year), with Uptown construction in the distance:

901 Jefferson (left) has been unveiled since the last update and is well on its way to completion. Meanwhile, the Ellington near Jack London Square (right) chugs along:

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One of my favorite features of San Francisco’s downtown street map, two grids meeting at a diagonal, is that looking down just about any street yields a view not only of a streetwall, but also of a cross-sectional sliver of the skyline, offset at an angle. Now that Rincon Hill and South of Market are quite literally on the rise, these cross-sectional views from streets north of Market are being accentuated in new ways, as blank spaces of sky above older mid-rise buildings are captured and brought within the urban form:

555 Mission (from Geary and Jones)

301 Mission (from Jackson Square)

Thirty-three story office tower 555 Mission topped off a couple months ago. The 645-foot Millennium Tower at 301 Mission, to be the tallest residential building west of the Mississippi River, just topped off last week. These may be the newest examples, but they represent only the beginning of the wave that will wash over South of Market in the next couple of decades, reinventing the identity of a neighborhood once better-known for its parking lots and ramps leading on and off the Bay Bridge.

Manhattanization? Some continue to cling to a knee-jerk disdain of high rises, but as we work to embrace ever-smarter growth, this concept seems increasingly embittered and outdated. But rest assured: San Francisco will never be Manhattan, and Rincon Hill is more directly inspired by Vancouver in any case. Then again, partial emulation of one of this country’s most successful urban locales is not really such a bad thing either. Whatever label you want to attach, the densifying city can be a beautiful sight.

There are some exciting construction projects rising in downtown Oakland these days, since many of the projects that were initially proposed in response to Jerry Brown’s 10K downtown revitalization plan are finally emerging from the planning process and becoming a reality. This post will attempt to cover some of the more high profile downtown projects, and a couple smaller ones as well. As usual, full sized versions of all these images are hosted on my Flickr account, so just click through any image for the larger version.

Where else could I start this post but with Uptown? For many years, the City of Oakland has been trying to redevelop this substantial chunk of land, a triangular region bounded by Telegraph and San Pablo, located south of 20th Street and north of City Center — but the area stubbornly resisted any sort of development. In some sense, both the trials and successes of downtown Oakland’s revitalization are reflected in the ebb and flow of Uptown; downtown can never be fully revitalized unless Uptown is vibrant. The city went through a few different plans for Uptown at different times — including, at one point, a possible new ballpark for the Oakland A’s — but ended up settling on a mixed-use development, a choice that is well-suited to this highly transit-oriented location, just steps from the 19th Street BART station and a slew of bus lines. Given the excellent location, I would have preferred to see a much denser development than the one which is being constructed, but it is actually a relief to see that this chunk of land, downtown’s largest hole, is at long last being given new life.

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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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This is the first in a new series of posts that will depict the construction progress of new projects in the Bay Area. In general, I’ll stick to high-rise or major mid-rise developments, as well as more unique projects — for example, museums, theaters, or otherwise notable cultural buildings. Why would I ever want to do such a thing? Well, for one, I know for certain that I’m not the only person excited by the evolution and intensification of the Bay Area skyline and streetscape. More fundamentally, though, I simply love to see empty, abandoned, blighted lots (or parcels of land that are poorly utilized as surface level parking) given new life in the form of a building, thus adding density, energy and vibrancy to the neighborhood. Keeping track of these construction projects is simply another way to enjoy and anticipate the revitalization of the urban spaces of which these new buildings will be an integral part.

Most of this first post will be devoted to recently completed or largely complete projects, at least on the exterior. Later this week or early next week, I plan to write another post in this series, with photos of projects that are still not anywhere near completion, but which I’ll of course follow more later as they go up. The Construction Progress posts will most likely not follow any sort of regular schedule. Rather, they will appear a bit more irregularly, whenever I remember a couple projects that really ought to be documented.

Note: Unless otherwise noted, I personally snapped all the photos that appear in this post (or indeed, anywhere in this blog). Just a reminder: full-sized photos are hosted on my Flickr account. To see any of these pictures in full detail, just click through, and the link will take you to the relevant Flickr page. I will probably also include additional photos on Flickr that are not explicitly included in the blog post. My photography skills are amateur (at best), so the purpose of these photos is not to indulge in any advanced photographic experiments, but simply to document the rising of these new developments.

The only project in this particular post located comfortably outside of downtown is the Fillmore Heritage tower:

Located in the Western Addition at the corner of Fillmore and Eddy Streets (not far from but still definitely not located on the highly gentrified Pacific Heights stretch of Fillmore Street), this 13-story tower is part of a continuing experiment of putting market rate housing in rough-and-tumble neighborhoods known better for housing projects and gang turf wars. Notably, this tower contains in its ground floor a new branch of Yoshi’s Jazz Club. The word “heritage” in the name of the building is a nod to the Fillmore District’s history as a centerpiece of the Bay Area jazz scene in the years before redevelopment projects wrecked the Western Addition. Still, there is something fiercely ironic about this new jazz club making its home in a condo tower.

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