Archive for the ‘Cultural Buildings’ Category
21st Century Fox
Downtown Oakland has been in the news a lot in recent weeks, and not in altogether good ways. The Oscar Grant riots, although properly directed at BART and not the City of Oakland, certainly did not boost the city’s reputation. Meanwhile, a few Downtown projects (901 Jefferson, the Ellington, and 630 20th Street) have gone in default, and construction of a new 23-story high-rise, 601 City Center, is on hold. And although we mind these developments, we should not lose sight of the prize. Many components to Downtown revitalization were lined into place as part of former mayor Jerry Brown’s 10K initiative to attract 10,000 new residents to Downtown Oakland. Now, years later, Brown’s efforts to transform Downtown have finally begun to bear fruit in the form of new apartments and a burgeoning retail, restaurant, and nightlife district to support them — and, in the process, create a destination unto itself. Downtown’s day is not quite here yet, but it marches ever closer. And finally, after four decades, one piece of utmost importance will fall into place: the restoration of Oakland’s Fox Theater is complete, and the doors of this Uptown District jewel will, at long last, open to the public once again. The opening gala is planned for February 5.
SFMTA Saturday: Muni Metro East and the CultureBus
There are two notable Muni events happening tomorrow, Saturday, September 20. First is the debut of the Muni Metro East light rail maintenance and storage facility. Located on Illinois Street between 25th Street and Cesar Chavez, the new facility is more convenient to the T-Third terminus at Sunnydale. LRVs can access the complex using two wyes south of the 23rd Street T-Third station. The $204 million facility will store 80 LRVs, thus providing relief to the overburdened Green Division at Balboa Park.
The other piece of news is the start of service on the new 74X line, a.k.a. CultureBus, a special service line that will link museums and other cultural institutions that are dispersed across San Francisco. The line will be introduced this week in order to usher in the opening of the new Academy of Sciences next week, on September 27. Fare — which is valid on the 74X for one full day — is $7 for adults, $5 for youth and seniors, and $3 with a Fast Pass. Service runs between about 8:40 am and 5:50 pm, on 20-minute headways. The line travels between Howard & New Montgomery and Golden Gate Park; along the way, it stops at the cluster of museums in the Yerba Buena District, at Union Square, and at the Asian Art Museum. Outbound buses then express to Golden Gate Park. The bus does not serve the more remotely-located Legion of Honor. Click here to see a list of inbound and outbound stops on the 74X.
Service will be run on special, branded vehicles — yellow, no less, so they will probably be difficult to miss. SFMTA anticipates pretty light ridership: about 20-30 riders per bus. The success of the new line is premised on the assumption that enough people are visiting multiple museums in a single day, in order to make the expensive fare worthwhile — and perhaps it is also premised on the assumption that riders are not sufficiently familiar with Muni to realize that the cultural institutions along the route are already well-served by much less expensive (although locally-serving) transit. It would be interesting to investigate the extent to which ridership would increase by anchoring this line at a regional rail node. One nice service option might be to coordinate service with the hourly northbound Caltrain arrivals on the weekend, depending on how many riders that connection would attract. Also: while the 74X route waffles within a few blocks of the BART subway, it does not actually stop directly at a station.
If you have an opportunity to ride the CultureBus this weekend, please write back with your experience!
Yerba Buena Cubed
A long-awaited cultural building has finally joined the ranks of the ever-growing collection of museums in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena District — a new home for the Contemporary Jewish Museum. The Museum was originally founded in 1984, but ten years ago, the Museum chose architect Daniel Libeskind to design a new structure to house the Museum in South of Market’s clustered quarter of museums. Libeskind is renowned for his work on museums across the world, including the Jewish Museums in Copenhagen and Berlin. Other work that Libeskind has done includes the recent expansion of the Denver Art Museum and the master plan for redevelopment of the World Trade Center Memorial site in Lower Manhattan.
Minty Fresh Plaza
Last Friday, an 18,000 square foot section of pavement was reclaimed for pedestrians, with the official opening of Mint Plaza, on Fifth Street between Market and Mission. The plaza occupies a former section of Jessie Street, right next to the Old Mint building. By 2011, this 1874 Alfred Mullett structure will house the Museum of San Francisco and the Bay Area, the American Money Museum, and the San Francisco Visitor’s Information Center (currently in Hallidie Plaza). Historically speaking, the Mint is one of the Bay Area’s most important buildings, at one point holding one-third of the gold reserves in the United States. The “Granite Lady”, as the building is fondly known, also managed to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire, when so little else did. The building has witnessed most of San Francisco’s history, sometimes actively and other times passively, but appropriately, when the Mint reopens, its museum will tell the story of this building and of the city that was born, destroyed, and born once again under its watch.
Although South of Market has more than its fair share of regional landmarks, this section of the city noticeably lacks public open space that interacts and synergizes with the life of the street. In that sense, the new Mint Plaza will be a welcome addition. The stark, simple design suggests that the plaza will not attract visitors of its own accord:
Rather, the vitality of this public space will depend on a critical mass of activity generated by the uses surrounding it. For the time being, that activity will largely be generated by Westfield shoppers, people who work in the area, and patrons of the commercial space ringing the plaza, once those storefronts are filled. However, Mint Plaza’s success will not truly be tested until the Mint building officially opens in 2011. By then, it will hopefully be a pleasant place to linger and enjoy one of San Francisco’s foremost civic spaces.
Rendering courtesy The Mint Project.
Downtown Oakland Construction: 10-25-2007
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.
