"Inner city is focusing on redevelopment"
Darleen earlier were were discussing city in fill. The following article is just the kind of thing that excites me personally. It's happening is S.F. And from my prospective one that includes working better than thirty years ago in Mission area. The comparison form then and now is just astounding. Then it was the pits now it's a peach.
And Portage you and I discussing Jack London Square in Oakland Ca. and how it's redevelopment was coming along.
This is an example of what could happen in Oakland if the powers that be can come to an agreement on a new home for the A's. As last I heard a competing developer wants the same land the ball park designer wants only this bunch wants mostly housing.
I want the ball park. It's a non polluting income stream and just way cool, in my opinion of course. It's one option I've been mulling over about my senior years. Strolling to the ball park with my season tickets. Afterwards stopping for a pop, a meal or both, a sit down in a small park. Swing by the market say Hay to the other regulars. Walk home and do it all in an afternoon. Never set foot in a car and have all the activities a metro city affords. That wouldn't be so bad. Plus as a home an early buy-in could be a good investment to boot. "imo of course"
dave
>snip<
bayarea.com
Former industrial land near Pacific Bell Park transforming after decades of listening, planning
BAYFRONT S.F. SITE WILL BECOME HOME TO AMBITIOUS MIX OF CAMPUS, HOUSING
By Marilee Enge
Mercury News
As Giants baseball fans trek to Pacific Bell Park this year, they are confronted with detours, cranes and a startling fact: A huge part of San Francisco is under construction.
Buildings more than 20 years in the planning are rising in the blocks near the ballpark, and fans will soon be rubbing shoulders with tenants of the city's biggest residential development since the postwar era.
Yet Mission Bay, as it's known, is more than an enormous subdivision. It is one of the most significant urban reuse projects in the country, converting former industrial land to housing, offices, parks and an ambitious new campus for the University of California, focused on biotechnology. The 300-acre site is equal to the size of San Francisco's entire downtown business district, and when the project is finished, observers say, it will fundamentally change the geography of the city.
At completion, in a decade or two, Mission Bay will have 6,000 homes and apartments, 1,700 of those for low- or modest-income families, 7 million square feet of office, retail and biotech space, a light-rail line, a public school, library, police and fire stations, and 50 acres of parks. The developer predicts the project will create 31,000 new jobs and housing for 11,000 people.
What is remarkable is that all this construction is taking place in the heart of a busy, densely packed city that has not seen a new subdivision in 50 years. Equally striking is that the current plan has few detractors.
``There's a sense from all over the spectrum it's a good project for the city,'' said Gabriel Metcalf, deputy director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. ``I think all those years of negotiation and public process resulted in a project people bought into and probably improved the design.''
Development on the old Southern Pacific rail yards and underused land surrounding Mission Creek was first proposed in the early 1980s. An award-winning plan by I.M. Pei's architecture firm called for office high-rises and apartments surrounded by artificial canals. A second plan backed by Mayor Art Agnos' administration in 1990 included more-intensive housing development. But shifting political and economic tides doomed both proposals.
In the mid-1990s, Catellus Development Corp., a spinoff of the railroad company, went back to the drawing board. At the urging of Mayor Willie Brown and community groups, the developer agreed to donate 43 acres to the University of California-San Francisco for a second campus. With the venerable medical school as its anchor tenant, Mission Bay was suddenly alive again.
Catellus formed an advisory board and held more than 200 public meetings. With 30 percent of its residential land set aside for affordable housing and broad swaths dedicated as parks and open space, community groups were satisfied. The final Mission Bay plan, centered on a public and private biotech center, was unanimously approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1998.
``The level of community participation was pretty amazing in a city where people fight one another over other parts of town,'' said Tom Jones, a former housing official and now head of the California Futures Network. ``They're giving free land for affordable housing.''
Buildings that work
The design appealed to the city's many opinionated factions, too. Few buildings will be taller than five or six stories, and those that reach Mission Bay's 16-floor cap are primarily on the corners of blocks so they do not create a monolithic feel. Low-income housing is mixed with high-end so the average passerby won't know the difference. Apartments face the streets, in keeping with San Francisco's vernacular, and streets are laid out in a grid, not suburban-style cul de sacs.
``What's so wonderful about Mission Bay is although it is a large project covering a lot of area, replacing this big brownfield site, they are adopting a lot of the traditional urban patterns,'' Metcalf said. ``The Mission Bay design guidelines are one of the best planning documents ever written in terms of how they understand how buildings work in a city.''
The first residents of Mission Bay will move into an apartment building on King Street, near the ballpark, in July. Under construction by the Mission Housing Development Corp., the 100 two-, three- and four-bedroom units were offered by lottery to low- and moderate-income San Francisco families who will pay $500 to $1,400 a month.
Their neighbors along Third Street will be the owners of 34 luxury condominiums facing Willie Mays Plaza. On the Fourth Street side is a market-rate apartment building. Across King, between Third and Fourth streets, more apartments are under construction above street-level retail space. Catellus has signed leases with Borders Books and with Safeway for the first supermarket in the city's South of Market district.
``Our plan is for a well-planned, well-designed, mixed-use, urban, transit-served community,'' said Douglas Gardner, president of Catellus Urban Development Group and manager of Mission Bay. ``It'll be an active neighborhood invigorated by the ballpark. We think it'll be a good urban living experience.''
King Street is a beehive of activity now, as three separate developers work to finish this year. Farther down the street, between Fourth and Fifth, construction on more apartments has begun, including a residential building for low-income seniors.
Slower going
But across the channel, as Mission Creek is known, the commercial side of Mission Bay is proceeding more slowly. The university broke ground on its first building in 1999 and is expected to occupy Genentech Hall later this year. Although private industry has been slow to follow, Gardner expresses optimism that it will sign new leases as UC begins to occupy its campus.
Even more in doubt is the traditional office component of the project. Late last year, Catellus halted construction on a building near the bay after MarchFirst, a Web services firm, pulled out of its lease and later filed for bankruptcy protection. Nearby, an office building for Gap Inc. is moving ahead, but Gardner said the struggling clothing retailer will probably sublease the space.
Yet officials with the city and Catellus say the project is positioned to weather downturns in the economy.
``The good news for us is, we didn't go out and build stuff that's empty,'' Gardner said. ``Whenever it comes around again, we'll be ready to go.''
Catellus can afford to be patient because it owns the land debt-free, said Amy Neches, the city official in charge of Mission Bay planning.
``Which is good because a project like this takes a long time,'' she said. ``This is a 20- or 30-year project. They're not going to walk away from it.''
Housing and urban design activists remain enthusiastic about the long-term prospects for the site. They say Mission Bay is a bold example of the New Urbanism, where jobs, homes, services and transit are built close together to reduce congestion and suburban sprawl.
``This will be dense but it will have a huge amount of open space,'' said Jones, the former housing official. ``Mission Bay should prove that living close can be living well. It should prove that everybody can have an attractive neighborhood regardless of income.''
He added, ``When my son goes to college, we're hoping there will be units available in Mission Bay. It's got some of the best weather in town.'' |
