[Carfreeliving] Vancouverize me -- Transbay / SOMA in NYT

[Dave Snyder]

Andy,

Do you know whether the "conceptual designs unveiled on Dec. 19" 
specified a "state-of-the-art" secure indoor bicycle parking area 
including ride-up access from the street?

Dave


>A (realtor's-eye) look at SF's Transbay Terminal and the
>Vancouverization of SOMA from yesterday's NY Times:
>
>=+=+=+=+=+=
>
>Trying to Build the Grand Central of the West
>
>    http://nytimes.com/2005/12/28/realestate/28transbay.html
>
>By Lisa Chamberlain
>New York Times, December 28, 2005
>
>
>SAN FRANCISCO - The Transbay Terminal is sometimes referred to by
>planners and developers here as the missing tooth in a smile.
>Situated in the rapidly growing South of Market neighborhood, the
>once-busy rail hub has slowly deteriorated into an underused bus
>station even as surrounding areas have been transformed by office and
>residential towers; SBC Park, where the Giants play baseball; and
>cultural institutions like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
>
>The first plan to redevelop the Transbay Terminal into the "Grand
>Central Terminal of the West" was released in 1967 and many plans
>since have collected dust. But the formation of the Transbay Joint
>Powers Authority in 2001 to push the project has begun to produce
>some notable results.
>
>The authority announced this month an international competition to
>select an architect and developer to design and build not only the
>five-level, 600,000 square-foot terminal but an adjacent 850-foot
>tower that is expected to be as symbolic for South of Market as the
>Transamerica Pyramid is to the central business district, which is
>north of Market Street.
>
>The competition, guided by conceptual designs unveiled on Dec. 19, is
>a result of two advances: the settlement of a major lawsuit over a
>land dispute that had the potential to delay the Transbay plan for
>years, and the adoption of a high-density master plan, devised by
>Skidmore Owings & Merrill, to redevelop the surrounding 40 acres and
>provide much of the financing for the terminal and tower.
>
>"Having worked on this for 10 years, once you start unveiling
>conceptual designs, you really start to see the value and the impact
>this project will have on the entire region," said Maria Ayerdi, the
>executive director of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority. "But it
>took time to get here. Some of the transit groups I work with have
>been working on this since before I was born. The reason the project
>had languished is because there are so many stakeholders that need to
>talk to each other and agree."
>
>The Transbay Terminal - expected to be complete by 2013, three years
>sooner than previous projections - will serve nine Northern
>California counties and various transit agencies both public and
>private, including trains, subways, buses and ultimately, it is
>hoped, high-speed rail to Los Angeles. The surrounding 40-acre area,
>much of it opened up after highways damaged in the 1989 earthquake
>were demolished, is to become San Francisco's most densely populated
>neighborhood, based on a planning model known as Vancouverism.
>
>Named after the city in British Columbia, Vancouverism is
>characterized by tall, but widely separated, slender towers
>interspersed with low-rise buildings, public spaces, small parks and
>pedestrian-friendly streetscapes and facades to minimize the impact
>of a high-density population. The Transbay neighborhood would have an
>estimated 350 people an acre, whereas the typical residential
>neighborhood with four-story flats has about 60 people an acre.
>
>"In San Francisco, there's been a concern about high density and its
>impact on the historic character of the city," said John Kriken, who
>developed the Transbay master plan at Skidmore Owings & Merrill.
>
>"One of the keys to the plan's acceptance," he said, "was that we
>added parks, little narrow-lane streets, and instead of allowing tall
>buildings to block sun and views, we proposed very slender and widely
>spaced towers so the views could continue to the bay."
>
>The entire project - the terminal, adjacent tower and the
>accompanying infrastructure - is projected to cost $4.35 billion,
>with roughly half of the financing coming from private development in
>the Transbay master plan area and the rest from local, state, and
>federal governments and from user fees.
>
>While the Transbay plan has dragged on and even seemed to teeter on
>the edge of extinction, development South of Market has marched
>forward. With long-planned projects finally coming to fruition,
>coupled with the more recent hot development market, the distinction
>between north and south of Market Street has blurred considerably.
>Once considered a less-expensive alternative for low-profile
>companies and high-tech start-ups, South of Market has recently
>welcomed notable corporations like Deloitte & Touche, J. P. Morgan
>Chase and KPMG, who all moved south into new and redeveloped towers.
>
>"It was a daring move for a law firm," said Joseph Malkin, a partner
>at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which moved from the central
>business district to a 10-story Class A space South of Market in
>2004. "The location is nontraditional and the building itself is
>quite a departure from the firm's old offices."
>
>According to Newmark Pacific, San Francisco's largest commercial real
>estate brokerage firm, 23 of its major financial, legal and brokerage
>clients have relocated from the central business district to South of
>Market in the last five years, absorbing more than three million
>square feet of Class A office space. While there is still a
>difference of about $10 a square foot in annual rent between Class A
>space in the traditional central business district and South of
>Market, real estate developers expect that gap to close as the
>Transbay Terminal area fills in.
>
>"If we start seeing brand-new high-rise buildings being built only
>South of Market, rents could surpass downtown," said David Wall,
>president of Fremont Properties, part of the Freemont Group, which
>has developed an estimated four million square feet of commercial
>space South of Market since the 1960's. In fact, the last suitable
>parcel for a high-rise office tower in downtown San Francisco is
>under development, rendering South of Market not just an alternative
>but the only alternative for new development.
>
>Entirely new neighborhoods South of Market are, meanwhile,
>progressing rapidly. Mission Bay, for example, is preparing for 6,000
>new residential units, over 50 acres of parks, six million square
>feet of commercial space, and a 43-acre medical campus for the
>University of California, San Francisco. Nearly 2,100 units of
>owner-occupied, rental, low- and moderate-income and student housing
>are already done or under construction, and more than a million
>square feet of commercial and academic space is in motion as well,
>according to a report issued by the San Francisco Planning and Urban
>Research Association, a 50-year-old nonprofit planning group.
>
>Last May, the city adopted a plan for Rincon Hill, just south of the
>Transbay Terminal area. The plan calls for 2,200 new housing units in
>addition to the approximately 1,500 already approved or built. "The
>most dynamic area right now is Rincon Hill," said Jeffrey Heller,
>principal of Heller Manus, an architecture and development firm based
>in San Francisco. "We have three major residential projects in Rincon
>Hill, one under construction. South of Market is finally blossoming
>as the urban center it should be."
>
>The other major site of redevelopment just west of Transbay, which
>was 30 years in the making, is Yerba Buena, and its final piece has
>just been finished with the December opening of the St. Regis Hotel.
>Yerba Buena, a huge redevelopment area, includes the Moscone
>Convention Center, the museum of modern art and the Yerba Buena
>Center for the Arts.
>
>"The naysayers said Yerba Buena would never get done," said Monica
>Finnegan, managing principal of Newmark Pacific. "The same is true
>with Mission Bay, which was just a plan on a roll of paper 15 years
>ago. It will be rewarding to prove the naysayers of the Transbay
>Terminal wrong, too."
>
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