Let’s run through the specs.  Cool, modern, glassy Saitowitz design in Hayes Valley? Check. (More or less: Curbed has been tracking this issue here and here.)  Replace underutilized space, including 70 surface parking spots, with higher density uses? Check.  A decent mix of units? Check. (There would be 32 studio + 48 one-bedroom + 45 two-bedroom = 136 total units, with 16 units [12%] affordable.)  Mixed-use project, with ground floor retail to activate the street environment?  Check.  Planned supermarket space to increase neighborhood livability, walkability, and self-sufficiency?  Check.  102 residential parking spots, plus two car-share spots and 91 spots for the grocery store — summing to a grand total of 195 new parking spots?

Rendering of 555 Fulton Street, courtesy of Stanley Saitowitz.

195 parking spots.  That can’t be all that “transit-first” — can it?  In the Hayes-Gough NCT, no off-street residential parking is required whatsoever, and a ratio of 0.5 parking spots per residential unit is allowed by-right.  No more than 0.75 spots per unit may be built, and then only with a conditional use authorization.  For a 136-unit development, the 0.75 ratio yields exactly 102 parking spots.  555 Fulton, then, is applying for the maximum amount of residential parking permissible under the code.  Moreover, that parking would be provided in a full two-level below-grade garage.  While it is preferable to have the parking located below-grade, the project sponsor has not proposed to use mechanical stackers for any of the parking, including the 34 residential spaces provided above and beyond the 0.5 threshold.

555 Fulton is an upcoming example of an emerging trend.  On the one hand, Planning acknowledges the need to integrate good parking policy into the process of approving new developments.  Indeed, San Francisco’s General Plan demands it:

Transportation Element, Policy 34.1: Regulate off-street parking in new housing so as to guarantee needed spaces without requiring excesses and to encourage low auto ownership in neighborhoods that are well served by transit and are convenient to neighborhood shopping.

Transportation Element, Policy 34.3: Permit minimal or reduced off-street parking supply for new buildings in residential and commercial areas adjacent to transit centers and along transit preferential streets. (*)

On the other hand, this principle is sometimes given lip service and then essentially discarded in practice.  There have been, for example, increases in parking approved by the Planning Commission and provided as part of larger residential projects located South of Market.  Another project of interest last year was 299 Valencia, whose conditional use was appealed to, but not overturned by, the Board of Supervisors.  The outcome of that case raised the question of whether a precedent — not a legally binding precedent, but a de facto precedent, nonetheless — had been set, in which the 0.5 NCT parking ratio limit had been replaced, practically speaking, by a 0.75 ratio.  But 299 Valencia is just a single project, and 555 Fulton will add a new data point.  Yet another data point is 200 Dolores, which may cut the opposite direction.  In that case, the Planning Commission has initially denied a conditional use to construct thirteen parking spaces (for thirteen units, a 1:1 ratio).  But the item was continued, and even that motion passed narrowly (4-3), with Commissioners Antonini, Lee, and Miguel dissenting.

In concept, the 555 Fulton project deserves support.  Well-designed, elegantly dense urban infill projects that add homes and neighborhood-serving retail near transit and employment is the exact flavor of development that we should be building everywhere that is appropriate, including throughout San Francisco.  But as more and more project sponsors are authorized to build more parking than the amount permitted by-right, a nagging concern is what the cumulative effect on air quality, neighborhood livability, street safety, and transit performance will be over time.

Some San Francisco neighborhoods are comprised primarily of older, relatively large apartment buildings that provide little to no parking.  And yet, these buildings still have no difficulty attracting residents.  In fact, they teach us a valuable lesson about parking: If you don’t build it, they still come, but most will come without cars.

Suppose that the Planning Commission decides to sign off on many future conditional use authorizations begging for more parking, but without sufficiently scrutinizing them — perhaps justifying them on the speculative ground that the parking allowed by-right is insufficient to encourage families to live in San Francisco.  Suppose also that on appeal, the Board of Supervisors either agrees with the Planning Commission, or fails to collect the votes needed to overturn the Planning Commission.  If that is the pattern for how things play out, then at what point can the General Plan’s good parking policy — even if genuinely applied to projects by Planning staff — enter this deliberative process successfully, with sufficient force to persuade decision-makers?

More generally, why did we bother spending the better part of a decade crafting the Market-Octavia Plan, only to ultimately betray the spirit of that planning effort on a case-by-case basis?  We hope that the Planning Commission will take these considerations to heart when it considers 555 Fulton and all future projects in the pipeline.

(*) Strictly speaking, Policy 34.3 does not apply to 555 Fulton, because the relevant segment of Fulton Street is not a TPS, nor is the project site directly adjacent to a designated transit center. However, both provisions summarize the City’s stance on developing new residential parking. Also, even Policy 34.1 taken by itself supports the notion that additional parking merits additional scrutiny.

Actually implementing such a plan would require careful study of engineering alternatives and travel patterns, but two potential redesigns of the freeway on- and off-ramps come to mind. Under one scenario, the ramps would adopt a similar configuration to the existing one, but connecting to a surface boulevard instead of an elevated freeway. In another scenario, Vermont Street and San Bruno Avenue, flanking I-80/US 101 on the east and west side respectively, would facilitate traffic flow onto and off of the freeway between Division and 17th Street (diminishing impact to the mostly residential blocks south of 17th and east of Vermont). Motorists would then navigate surface streets for only a couple blocks to access Division and other South of Market arteries. This latter alternative would confine immediate freeway-oriented traffic to the primary freeway corridor and adjacent parallel streets, freeing up land west of I-80 that is currently in the shadow of freeway overpasses. For simplicity, the map I drew for this post assumes the latter approach. Click here to see the full map:

Opportunities abound to improve the pedestrian realm, on Townsend (top) and on Division (bottom).

The full corridor considered here — including Townsend, Division, 13th Street, and Duboce — is bounded by Market Street on the west end and Mission Bay on the east end. Not specifically marked on the map, but nonetheless assumed, is that livable streets treatment would be implemented to the fullest extent possible. Division/13th Street would itself be completed to accommodate transit, pedestrians, and bicyclists, in addition to automobiles; featuring a public plaza and lined with active ground-floor uses, Division and 13th would be conceived in the manner of a “great street.” Alleys and cul-de-sacs reaching into the middle of the large South of Market blocks could be connected to reduce block footprints to a human scale, and they present nice opportunities to add pockets of green and cobblestone pedestrian paths.  Since this is long-term, the map includes hypothetical locations for stations on a new BART line — but it also includes new crosstown streetcar line between the Caltrain station and Market Street to help spur development on the corridor. Some changes to signalization would be required; westbound, coming from the E-Embarcadero route on King, streetcars would turn right on 4th Street and then left on Townsend (using a brief section of track on 4th Street that would be built with the Central Subway) and then follow Townsend, Division, 13th, and Duboce to Market Street. There would be a new wye at Duboce and Market, which would include a non-revenue connection to ease access to Geneva Yard. Historic streetcars could be used for the route, complemented by low floor modern streetcars. The route could be named D-Duboce, maintaining the {D, E, F} consecutive lettering for surface streetcar routes.

The new section of track, combined with existing track on Market, the Embarcadero, and King, would create a large loop through the northeastern quadrant of the city. With a little extra track, double-end streetcars following the new route could turn right onto Market off of Duboce and travel as far as Van Ness, then using the Eleventh Street wye to turn around. Single-end streetcars could run the large loop with Market Street, or they could use an optional extension along Octavia Boulevard to Hayes Valley. Along Octavia, the northbound track would be in the far right lane and the southbound track in the far left lane; upon reaching Hayes Green, two possibilities are a simple loop right at the Green, or a loop around the block on Grove and Laguna, which reaches a bit deeper into the neighborhood.

Townsend Street, northeast from Sixth Street.

Even with the planned commuter rail extension to 1st and Mission, some runs will likely terminate at Mission Bay; as such, 4th & Townsend will increase in importance as a transit nexus, and there is so much more we could do in terms of place-making in this area. We can envision a high-rise district to cap off the station, with the tallest points concentrated along Townsend and stepping down to the north and west. Some track capacity for storing and turning around trains will be necessary at the current Caltrain yard, but through tracks will transition underground, perhaps freeing up additional land for development near the station. Despite what appears on the map — which marks city blocks, but not many lot lines — one objective would be to maximize visual interest by avoiding the monolithic, single-design, master-planned blocks that now characterize development in Mission Bay. Heights along both Townsend and Division/13th would step up and down to vary the urban form and transition to nearby neighborhoods — but they would remain very dense, creating activity centers and high-rise clusters that concentrate near transit the new jobs and residents that will grow the city for decades to come.

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).

We should first observe that 299 Valencia satisfies rudimentary urban design principles and is designed to mitigate the negative effects of the parking included in the project. The scale of the building is compatible with the neighborhood context, the parking is contained in an underground garage accessed via the side street Stevenson, and the ground floor of the building includes retail that would activate and visually enhance the neighborhood, particularly as compared to the surface parking lot that is there now. But the dispute is not about the project as a whole, which the pro-infill appellants actually support. Rather, the controversy concerns the seven additional parking spaces that trigger the conditional use. The project sponsor claimed that due to the expense of building an underground garage, reducing the parking to the 0.5 as-of-right maximum would necessitate an altered design without an underground garage, stripping away all but a fraction of the retail square footage. The argument revolves around two sections of the Planning Code:

• Section 151.1(f), which applies to NCT zones, requires that cars interacting with the project “not unduly impact pedestrian spaces or movement, transit service, bicycle movement, or the overall traffic movement.” The Planning Department believes this condition is satisfied by locating the underground garage access to Stevenson Street, which is the least trafficked of the three streets onto which the project fronts. The appeal, however, correctly pointed out that although egress and ingress is concentrated on Stevenson, those cars will still have to drive on 14th and Valencia. This could negatively impact bicyclists, in particular, because the project is located at the intersection of two major bicycle routes.
• Section 303(c)(1), which is a subjective provision that discusses CU approval, requires such approval if it is the case that “the proposed use or feature, at the size and intensity contemplated and at the proposed location, will provide a development that is necessary or desirable for, and compatible with, the neighborhood or the community.” The appeal emphasized the fact that many buildings in the immediate vicinity comply with the 0.5 ratio, and that 73% of nearby households are carfree, implying that the particular feature of the additional parking would be incompatible with the neighborhood. In addition, the appeal asserts that extra parking is neither necessary for marketability of the units, nor desirable in light of the city’s transit-first policy — and that the CU would fly in the face of several years worth of planning and discussion that went into crafting the Market/Octavia Plan. The Planning Department, on the other hand, emphasized that the extra parking itself need not be necessary or desirable, but rather, that the project as a whole be necessary or desirable — and it concludes that this mixed-use project, which would activate the street and add housing units (including four BMR units), is certainly desirable, and that its scale is compatible with the neighborhood.

We could spend more time spinning our wheels about ambiguities in the code language — about whether or not a project satisfies the subjective requriement of “desirable,” or whether or not its excessive parking outweighs its other desirable features. Even though the conditional use inquiry focuses on a particular project, it is worthwhile for us to consider the greater ramifications. In this sense, we may understandably be concerned about the precedent that the Planning Commission’s CU might set, particularly because the Market/Octavia Plan will guide the development of thousands of new units in its coverage area. The precedent might not be a literally binding one, but it may turn out to be an effective pattern that emerges; the adoption of the Market/Octavia Plan is still too recent yet for us to say. The Planning Department’s argument in favor of the CU authorization for 299 Valencia could apply to many other projects in which neighborhood-compatible mixed-use buildings are proposed for surface parking lots or otherwise vacant/underutilized property, unless other special circumstances detract from the desirability of those projects. Given that developers will often pursue the maximum allowable parking, the success of a parking CU at 299 Valencia could incentivize many other Market/Octavia project sponsors to request a CU for their projects, which could well be deemed just as desirable as 299 Valencia. If the Planning Commission were to grant a CU authorization for those projects, as it did for 299 Valencia, the cumulative result could be that areas zoned “NCT” run the danger of amassing new parking above the 0.5 maximum that the Market/Octavia Plan deemed to be the most appropriate target for NCT neighborhoods — and this undermines the spirit of livability that is central to the Market/Octavia Plan.

While on the subject of Market & Octavia, an additional topic we cannot neglect is the 55 Laguna redevelopment of the UC Extension site (pictured in the above two images), which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In December 2003, the UC Berkeley extension relocated off the 55 Laguna site, which lies near the geographic heart of the Market & Octavia Plan area. The AF Evans 55 Laguna development has been the subject of separate but concurrent discussions at City Hall.

A controversial issue was the need to rezone the site from public to a designation appropriate for a mixed use neighborhood. The project was protested and appealed on several bases — including compliance with CEQA, the National Historic Preservation Act, and NEPA on the basis of potential HUD funds for the affordable housing component — expressing concern that the demolition would constitute a substantial adverse change that would cause the site to lose historical preservation tax credit and to be de-listed as historically significant resource. But while the appellants disapproved of the project’s current incarnation, their contentions did not unearth any true inadequacies in the EIR, and so the requisite zoning amendments eventually passed through committee and onto the full Board, where they were first passed last week — creating a special use district bounded by Laguna, Haight, Buchanan, and Hermann Streets to facilitate the 55 Laguna project. This replaces the site’s public zoning, but merely zoning a parcel as public is no guarantee that the land will actually enjoy vibrant public use, as this site clearly demonstrates. The UC Extension’s blank walls have had a deadening effect on the surrounding neighborhood, giving the institution the feel of a fortress.

Fortress or no fortress, total demolition of this historic resource would be a highly significant loss; but the project plan is a far cry from total demolition. Although the plan calls for the demolition of Richardson Hall Annex and Middle Hall Gymnasium (the oldest building on campus), 83% of the historically significant square footage — located in Richardson Hall, Woods Hall, and Woods Hall Annex — will be retained and reused in the complex, which will also include seven newly constructed buildings. Unique features like the WPA-era Reuben Kadish mural, which was added in 1936, will also be incorporated into the new plan site. Meanwhile, the deadening retaining wall would be opened up to provide a retail frontage onto the street. Perhaps best of all, surface parking and chain link fences will be replaced with public amenities and a major housing component that received a booster shot of affordability from Mirkarimi: over 400 new rental units, of which 36-37% are affordable at 50% of AMI, including the Openhouse project, an eight-story building with close to 90 affordable units welcoming to LGBTQ seniors. In terms of public amenities, there will be about 5,000 square feet of commercial space, a 12,000 square foot community center in Woods Annex, and 35,000 square feet of public open space that includes a garden and a park bridging the two halves of Waller Street. Although Mirkarimi has expressed a desire for it to relocate in the near future, the UCSF Dental Clinic and its associated parking will also remain on the site.

On balance, the 55 Laguna project — which will inject higher density, active street uses, and publicly accessible amenities within immediate reach of Market Street transit — harmonizes well with the spirit underlying the Market & Octavia Plan.

Renderings courtesy AF Evans.

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.

As indicated in the above map, the plan appropriately focuses higher residential density on the neighborhood’s primary thoroughfare and transit corridor, calling for a streetwall 80-85 feet tall, with infill opportunities along and immediately off of Market Street itself — and milder heights of 30-45 feet deeper in the neighborhood. The plan concentrates the very highest densities in a Special Use District (SUD) centered at the intersection of Van Ness and Market, in which slender towers (up to 400 feet tall) placed directly on top of the Muni Metro Van Ness station would step down to about 120 feet within a couple blocks of the intersection. Such a plan could immeasurably improve the highly disappointing intersection of Van Ness and Market. By all rights, this intersection should be an energetic centerpiece of the city landscape — but it has little in the way of pedestrian amenities, and its low-rise frontages are a huge letdown:

Not only that, but it is scarred by that cardinal urban sin: underutilized space in the form of surface parking:

Hardly impressive for the meeting of two of the City’s greatest boulevards. Landmark towers alone would not transform this intersection into a real place, but they could be an important part of the formula. Streetscape improvements carried out as part of the Van Ness bus rapid transit project, including perhaps especially carefully designed stations at Market and Mission, are yet another component. The Market-Octavia plan also paves the way for the creation of a dense, mixed-use “SoMa West” neighborhood and new open space, centered on the area in which Mission Street splits into the one-way pair of Mission and Otis. To account for the increases in density and some 6000 additional housing units, the plan area is designed not only to discourage private auto use, but correspondingly to aid smoother passage of surface transit and to create a streetscape more attractive and friendly to both pedestrians and cyclists. The northeast end of the neighborhood would connect to the proposed bus rapid transit corridor along Van Ness Avenue, itself a corridor with some two thousand units of infill housing under construction and in the pipeline.

Years after the planning process was initiated, the version of the plan adopted last year continues to be subjected to further amendment that actually brings it closer to the admirable intent of the 2002 draft plan. Three contentious issues have dominated recent discussion at the Board of Supervisors: affordable housing, parking limits, and density caps — in particular, how those issues would interact with sub-districts contained within the plan area. In addition to the Market/Van Ness SUD, areas such Market Street west of Franklin are designated as Neighborhood Commercial Transit (NCT) to encourage active retail uses on the ground floor, an uninterrupted streetwall along Market, and any parking to be accessed from the rear. The last category, Residential Transit-Oriented (RTO), covers the more low-rise residential blocks tucked further in behind Market, including parts of Duboce Triangle and the Lower Haight.

First, the affordable housing fees. Supervisors Mirkarimi and McGoldrick had earlier agreed to implement an across the board $10/square foot impact fee on developers to be applied to affordable housing, which McGoldrick continues to support. Mirkarimi later suggested a tiered system to avoid punishing small developers who would be hit harder by a $10/square foot fee. Under this tiered proposal, developers would pay $8/square foot for projects located in the Market/Van Ness SUD, $4/square foot for NCT projects, and no fee for projects in the RTO area. In addition, Mirkarimi’s proposal suggests that in lieu of purchasing TDRs to exceed maximum allowable FAR in the Market/Van Ness Special Use District, developers could contribute $30/square foot to the city affordable housing fund. These fees would be imposed in addition to other fees raised for impacts related to parking and transit.

The second source of dispute is the parking. Planning had relaxed the limits originally proposed in 2002, which elicited protest from neighborhood residents (notably the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association) who were quite justifiably upset at the prospect of encouraging more auto use and degrading the livability of their streets. McGoldrick’s amendment on parking was geared to be attractive to families, pushing for one-to-one parking for family-designated housing (at a minimum of two bedrooms and 1000 square feet). Mirkarimi’s version, on the other hand, is comparable to the original recommendations from the 2002 draft plan; indeed, even slightly stricter, with a 0.25 parking ratio in the Market/Van Ness SUD and 0.5 for areas designated NCT and RTO (with up to 0.75 in the RTO under conditional use). There is now general agreement to adopt these stricter limits.

The third and last major source of dispute is the RTO density soft cap, which would require conditional use for projects building more than one unit for a 600 square foot area. Duboce Triangle neighbors pushed this cap for just their own corner of the plan area, and Mirkarimi’s proposal maintains the cap for Duboce Triangle but removes the cap for RTO blocks outside of Duboce Triangle. McGoldrick’s proposal, in accordance with the Planning Commission’s recommendation, would apply this cap for all units in the RTO zone (exempting permanently affordable units), to prevent unit subdivision from encroaching on the supply of family-sized housing.

Opponents would point to the removed density cap in Mirkarimi’s amendment as evidence that the Market-Octavia plan flies in the face of the historic architectural context that defines the neighborhood and introduces unsuitable and unmitigated levels of density, but practically, the density we would see built is limited not only by the plan-specified heights but also by emphasis on the creation of housing intended for families: a minimum of two bedrooms and 1000 square feet. Moreover, the assertion that the proposed heights would overwhelm the neighborhood and dwarf existing structures is absurd. Several older apartment buildings already exemplify what the maximum allowed height would be in the plan area, excluding the Market/Van Ness SUD, which is the plan’s sole provision for high-rise density. And in some cases, existing buildings already exceed the heights specified in the plan. Consider the following examples. What do you think: are these overwhelming? Do they tower offensively over the neighborhood?

Opponents also present Market-Octavia as though it is a drastic change that will irreparably scar the landscape; but in a very real sense, the plan simply formalizes what we have done all along when building city neighborhoods — or, more precisely, what we once did. Perhaps the major difference is that although our neighborhoods were first built in the era of the streetcar, we find ourselves now in the age of the private car. Modern reliance on the automobile handicaps our ability to manage density without simultaneously chipping away at that reliance — both negatively by limiting parking, and affirmatively by designing a streetscape that encourages walking. Market-Octavia is not about razing blocks of Victorians to the ground and erecting skyscrapers in their stead. With the exception of the Market/Van Ness SUD — just one small corner of the plan area — the plan is strictly low- to mid-rise, but more importantly, it provides a set of guidelines to govern infill opportunities, so that any infill developments are consistent with a general desire to promote livability by emphasizing the neighborhood’s transit orientation. Market-Octavia is not about creating a new neighborhood, but rather, about enhancing and providing cohesion to a collection of neighborhoods that in many ways are already quite successful, but that could be even better.

In some sense, it boils down to the following question: do we want to preserve this?

Or would we rather have more buildings like this?

Yes, the plan area is full of lovely, modestly-sized Victorians, but they are largely located in RTO blocks with the milder 35-40 foot height limit. Heights in those blocks were so specified in order to respect and preserve this comfortable, characteristically San Franciscan residential streetscape. And even if a three-story Victorian and an eight-story apartment building are juxtaposed (as occurs in one of the above images), is that really so bad? Is it not precisely this sort of architectural variety that adds a distinctly urban interest to the street environment? Did I miss an executive decision requiring that every building on a given block be of identical height and architectural style, and that every block in a given neighborhood look identical? Encouraging taller buildings to front onto Market Street and to be built to the property line will help to emphasize the angularity of Market Street intersections and heighten visual excitement on what, after all, is (or should be) San Francisco’s most impressive thoroughfare.

The Market-Octavia Plan is the product of extensive community involvement spanning the better part of a decade. That community input has been undeniably invaluable in terms of taking a great initial idea and developing the details. And yet, no plan, however sound, can ever be perfect to all people; drag our feet too long, and we risk losing sight of what makes the underlying spirit of the plan so special in the first place. And all the while, fences and remaining empty lots along Octavia are wounds in the urban fabric — to be sure, no longer shrouded in the darkness of a freeway, but nonetheless still not fully healed. So much unrealized potential: yet once the dust settles after almost a decade of discussions, neighborhood meetings, environmental review, negotiations, and squabbles, we may at last enjoy watching this keystone district in the heart of the City transform into a vibrant hub of neighborhoods.

Full size images 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.

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.