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:

And what else should make its way into the new Broadway Grand building, besides… Starbucks? At least another branch of Ozumo will make up for it:

The Essex high-rise residential project at 100 Grand is contributing to the development of a new streetwall along Grand Avenue. Here are three views of this major addition to the Valdez area, from Broadway (left), from across Grand (middle), and from the tip of Lake Merritt (right):

As usual, full sized versions are hosted on my Flickr account. As a side note, I will most likely post construction update photos to Flickr (in the construction progress photo set) on a semi-regular basis, even if the photos do not make their way into a formal post on the blog — so if you are interested in even more construction update photos, that photo set is a good place to look.

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disdain of high rises, but as we work to embrace ever-smarter growth, this concept seems increasingly embittered and outdated.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.

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.

The Uptown project, carried out by Forest City, will be built in phases. The first phase consists of 9,000 square feet of retail and 665 rental units in a few low- to mid-rise buildings. Check out the website for a rendering, and here are a few photos, taken from different corners of the project site, depicting the current state of construction:

100 Grand Avenue, at the corner of Webster, will be a new high-rise addition to the Valdez section of downtown, just a few blocks from the large Uptown development. The structure will have a few terraced heights to reduce bulk, but it will include a 22-story tower and will add 238 rental units and 5,415 square feet of retail space to the emerging Uptown area. The left image below is a photo of the poster rendering hanging at the construction site, and the right picture shows the construction:

Left image is a photo of a rendering from Essex Property Trust.

The first phase of Broadway Grand adds 132 units and 22,000 square feet of retail to the northern edge of downtown, once again quite close to both 100 Grand and the centerpiece Uptown project. Phase 2 is planned to add 367 units and 27,700 square feet of retail to the area:

The next project, nine-story 2100 Franklin, is downtown Oakland’s first office construction since 555 City Center was completed in 2002. The building is connected to existing the 2101 Webster building, and the two buildings together form “Center 21″. 2100 Franklin has a long, narrow shape because of the constraints of the site. The curved blue glass shows distorted reflections of nearby buildings on Lake Merritt:

The Ellington, rising on Broadway between 2nd and 3rd Streets, will add 134 units and 11,197 square feet of retail to the Jack London Square area. The developers of this project, Molasky Pacific, are also planning another high-rise next to 100 Grand. The left image below is the rendering:

Left image courtesy Molasky Pacific Property.

Located along Broadway between 6th and 7th Streets at the edge of Chinatown, the new 8 Orchids building adds 157 units in 11 stories, along with 6,400 square feet of retail. The front of the building faces 7th Street (top left picture below), with the bulk of the building shifted towards Broadway (top right picture below). The unfortunate result of this design is that the building turns its back on the intersection of 7th and Broadway (bottom picture below):

There are also a few projects being constructed in Old Oakland/City Center area. 901 Jefferson is a 75-unit mixed use building. The left image is a rendering, and the right image depicts the current state of construction:

Left image courtesy Pyatok Architects.

Right next to 901 Jefferson is Market Square, a two-phased project that adds 202 housing units in the block bounded by Clay, Jefferson, 8th, and 9th Streets. The first phase was completed some time ago, but the second phase of construction is nearing completion. Some variation in color and features helps to mitigate the monotony that is often a problem in these “master planned” developments:

The 7-story City Walk project would add 252 units of housing to the T-10 block of City Center, in the shadow of the Federal Building twin towers,

but a few weeks ago, the Business Times reported that Olson Company, City Walk’s developer, has placed a construction freeze on the project.

Although these construction progress reports tend to focus on housing and office construction, I must mention two major cultural buildings set to open downtown in the next couple of years. One of these buildings is the Cathedral of Christ the Light, a basket-shaped structure rising on the shores of Lake Merritt, in front of the Ordway Building at the corner of Grand and Harrison. Saint Francis de Sales, a building dating from 1893, formerly served as the cathedral for the Oakland Diocese, until that structure was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The church was subsequently demolished, because the diocese could not afford to restore the structure and carry out the necessary seismic updates. The Cathedral of Christ the Light, currently under construction, is the replacement cathedral:

When I first saw renderings of this cathedral, I was pleased to see that a more contemporary structure would soon be gracing the shores of Lake Merritt, the curve of the building a nice foil to the nearby Kaiser Center. I was equally excited to finally see the last of that parking lot in front of Ordway. Now that the building is going up, though, I’m not quite as convinced. Perhaps its magic can only be unlocked upon completion. An office or residential tower might have been more appropriate for this location, but this cathedral will be an interesting addition.

The second cultural building to mention here is the landmark Fox Theater. Originally opened in 1929, this theater has been dormant since 1963, but it is finally set to reopen, hopefully next year. The theater is in the process of being restored to its former glory:

The theater building will also house the Oakland School for the Arts. In addition, a new building (Fox Courts) with 80 units of affordable housing and 4,800 square feet of retail will be built behind the theater. Here is a rendering of that project:

Image courtesy Resources for Community Development.

It is nothing short of criminal that this gorgeous theater has sat unused for decades, but we are lucky that it has not suffered the fate of so many other old theaters, i.e. demolition. When it reopens, this jewel of the Uptown District will fill a crucial hole and add a new touch of vitality to the neighborhood.

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.

This picture, taken from several blocks away, shows the rising Millennium Tower beginning to take its rightful place on the skyline:

Next door to the tower will be an 125-foot (11-story) building that will have more condos. The great part of this whole project is the fact that the Millennium Tower and its much shorter neighbor are adding 419 additional homes within spitting distance of what already pretty much is, but will one day really be, the most transit-oriented location west of the Mississippi River. The bad part? We are also building four layers of underground parking (350 total parking stalls) at this transit-rich location. Here is the construction pit on the site, excavating the parking garage, which will be located under the shorter building:

Moving a couple blocks up the street from the Millennium, 555 Mission will add 34 stories of office, along with a small retail component. The image on the left is the rendering, and the image on the right depicts the current state of construction:

Left image courtesy Heller Manus Architects.

Now that both 555 Mission and the Millennium are going up, a nice “canyon” is starting to develop along Mission Street:

Switching gears to Civic Center, the 20-story Argenta building will add 179 units and a small street-level retail component at Polk and Market. This project serves the City’s dual purpose of revitalizing the mid-Market corridor and of increasing the height and density of structures in the immediate region of the intersection of Van Ness and Market. The leftmost image is the latest rendering, and the two images show the construction progress from two different angles:

Leftmost image courtesy Anka Property Group.

Nearby, a 100-foot (8-story) mixed use building (with 50 units of housing, 21,200 square feet of commercial space, and additional office space), is rising at 77 Van Ness Avenue, at the corner of Fell Street:

The Hayes (a.k.a. 55 Page Street) is a 128-unit residential building in Hayes Valley. Below, the leftmost image is the rendering, followed by two pictures depicting construction. The second picture, taken from Market Street, illustrates the angular “chaos” that The Hayes adds to the buildings in the area, because of the way this building is set back just behind Market but is still oriented into the regular north-of-Market street grid:

Leftmost image courtesy Heller Manus Architects.

Finally, two large holes in the Tenderloin are, at long last, being filled. The first is at 990 Polk (the southeast corner of Polk and Geary) and will add housing units for seniors, though I’ve heard conflicting numbers as to the precise number of units. As of a few months ago, the City was quoting the project at 143 units, but the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation has cited the number as 110 or 160 units. In any case, there will be between 100 and 200 units. The picture on the left depicts what the building might look like, and the right picture shows the construction progress:

Left image courtesy Tenderloin Neighborhood Development.

In addition, two new buildings will be constructed at 125 and 149 Mason, between Ellis and Eddy, in the shadow of the Hilton hotel. The larger building at 125 Mason is currently under construction:

This project, carried out by Millennium Partners in conjunction with the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. and Cecil Williams and Glide Memorial, is actually the off-site affordable housing component of the Millennium Tower, and it will add 137 units of affordable housing just one block from the Powell BART/Muni station. 125 Mason will be 14 stories tall and will have 81 one- to four-bedroom apartments. The smaller building (149 Mason) will be 8 stories and will have 56 studio apartments. Because the neighborhood is so dense, lacks open space, and is more well-known for prostitution and drug dealing than for its positive attributes, it is easy to forget that the Tenderloin has one of San Francisco’s largest concentrations of children. The families who will call this building home will benefit from a courtyard and play area that are part of the complex.

Just one final note: both of these first two construction posts are quite long. Future posts in this series will probably be a bit shorter and more manageable, but I wanted to get a substantial start. More of these posts will be coming in the future, both to jumpstart new projects and to show the progress that has been made with these projects.

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.

690 Market, at the corner of Kearny and Market, once the headquarters of the San Francisco Chronicle, will soon be home to the posh Ritz-Carlton Residences. The original structure, which dates from 1890, was designed by architect Daniel Burnham, who worked on several high-profile projects, including Manhattan’s famous Flatiron Building. This building is notable for many reasons — not only is it one of the few structures east of Van Ness to survive the 1906 earthquake, but it is also the first “skyscraper” in San Francisco to be constructed with a steel frame; not a skyscraper by modern standards perhaps, but it was the tallest thing around at the time it was built. The original structure and entryway to 690 Market have been preserved, but with additional stories added above:

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For reference, here is a picture of the original building, as it looked in 1890:

[Picture lifted from the Ritz-Carlton website.]

The two Infinity towers (300 Spear Street) and their associated mid-rise podium will add 658 housing units to Rincon Hill. The first tower (36 stories) has been constructed (left picture), while the second, taller tower (41 stories) has just recently begin construction (right picture):

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Just a few blocks from the Infinity towers is One Rincon Hill, the centerpiece of this area. Constructed in a prominent landmark location just a few feet from the Bay Bridge (left picture), the tower is finally getting topped off (right picture). These pictures denote only the taller of the two planned towers:

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Next, here are three angles on the Hotel Intercontinental at 5th and Howard Streets. From left to right, these views are from the west, the south, and the north:

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The hotel is located next to Moscone Center and will no doubt prove to be popular with attendees of conferences and conventions in the area. Coming from the east (keeping in mind the context of the Metreon, Moscone, and Westfield) this hotel fits in rather well; however, approaching from the west side, the hotel is a sudden and stark contrast to its surroundings, acting as a clear demarcation point between the Yerba Buena district to the east and the rest of South of Market.

To close this post, here are two further additions to South of Market, near Civic Center. The recently completed Federal Building (left picture), shown in this picture rising ominously behind the older low-rise storefronts on Market Street, is understandably controversial, but I find its striking austerity to be a refreshing change. The other tower here is the SoMa Grand (1160 Mission) condo tower (right picture), a 246-unit development:

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These two buildings are oriented perpendicular to each other, in the same block bounded by Mission, Stevenson, 7th, and 8th Streets.

Although I hope to have a couple more posts before then, please be sure to check back later this week or early next week for a follow-up construction progress post featuring projects that are still further away from completion.