Archive for the ‘Market-Octavia / Hayes Valley’ Category
Bridging the Divide
When Octavia Boulevard opened in 2005, it became an urbanist case study, joining The Embarcadero as another shining example of how removing key segments of freeway can breathe new life into once-blighted urban neighborhoods. Empty lots along Octavia are still undeveloped, so Hayes Valley is a work in progress; and the intersection of Market & Octavia, where the freeway touches down to the street, created a dangerous situation in which motorists executing an impermissible right turn onto the freeway collided with bicyclists. Octavia is heavily traveled by motorists, but it still remains a vast improvement over the northern segment of the Central Freeway that once cast shadows over Hayes Valley. South of Market neighborhoods, in contrast, have not had the opportunity to enjoy a similar renaissance. The urban fabric of those neighborhoods remain sliced in half by the southern segment of the reconstructed Central Freeway — even while South of Market bears the burden of hosting still other freeways and many unsafe traffic sewers. The remaining freeway, combined with 13th/Division Street directly below the freeway (pictured above), cuts a wide swath of automobile capacity into the heart of San Francisco, thus preventing the affected neighborhoods from flourishing in the way that neighborhoods north of Market have. One day, it would be gratifying to see the rest of the Central Freeway removed. And if it were removed, what might San Francisco look like then? What follows here is certainly not a proposal, but simply a depiction of one potential vision for the Central Freeway corridor — a long-term vision, which aims not just to reclaim, but to transform, neighborhoods now cast in shadow. The goal is to not simply remove the freeway structure and replace it with a boulevard, but to set the bar high with a joint transit and land use vision.
Board of Supervisors Hears Appeal of 299 Valencia
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| 299 Valencia, present and future; courtesy of www.299valenciastreet.com. |
San Francisco is a transit-first city — officially, at least, according to its Charter — which means that actions taken by the city government, where they are related to transportation issues at all, should promote and prioritize public transit above driving. Given this background assumption, one might think that the Planning Commission would be disinclined to approve the inclusion of extra parking (beyond the stipulated limits) in development projects that it reviews. But the opposite is often the case, which forces citizens to step up to the plate and speak to the benefits of structuring planning decisions around people rather than automobiles. This particular defect of the Planning Commission is one that we have discussed here before, in the context of Folsom Street. The latest episode in the parking battle saga was fought yesterday over seven parking spaces at 299 Valencia, a 36-unit mixed use project slated for a surface parking lot at 14th and Valencia Streets. The five-story project provides four BMR units and about 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. The project is located on the very edge of the Market/Octavia Plan area, on land zoned NCT-3, and the site carries a maximum parking ratio of 0.5, or one parking stall per two units. 18 residential parking stalls would be allowed as of right, but the proposal contained 27 residential parking stalls so that the units would be more marketable to high-end buyers. The additional parking requires a conditional use (CU) authorization. In November 2008, the Planning Commission did unanimously grant a CU, on the condition that two of the 27 stalls be changed to car share spots, leaving 25 residential stalls. This falls within the 0.75 ratio permitted under the CU scenario. The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association (HVNA), which was a key player during Market/Octavia planning, has been a voice for limiting parking and promoting walkable neighborhoods. HVNA filed an appeal (joined by a number of individuals and local organizations, including the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Livable City) shortly after the CU was granted, and the appeal was finally heard by the new Board of Supervisors and its new President, David Chiu. In the end, the Board failed to collect the eight votes necessary to disapprove the Planning Commission’s conditional use (the vote was 7-4, with Supervisor Maxwell aligning with the six members of the progressive alliance).
Thumbs Up For Market-Octavia and 55 Laguna
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.
Market-Octavia: Building a Vibrant Hub
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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.
Construction Progress: 9-25-2007
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:
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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:
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Left image courtesy Handel Architects.
