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Posted Sep 16, 2007, 6:12 PM
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BANNED
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: San Francisco & Tucson
Posts: 24,088
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John King Won't Quit
It's Sunday, so here comes ANOTHER attempt to slam a tall TransBay tower. Why is this guy so obsessed? What can we do about it? Now that he's giving ink to the opinions of lovers of OLD architecture, will he give equal time to US? I'm not holding my breath.
Quote:
Hopes for Financial District are high, but not too not tall
John King, Chronicle Urban Design Writer
Sunday, September 16, 2007
The architectural history buffs who toured San Francisco's Financial District on Saturday morning oohed at classical columns. They chuckled at long-ago gossip. They winced at icebox-like modern towers.
And nobody seemed thrilled that a new skyscraper might be allowed to climb far beyond everything that's already here - an idea likely to be endorsed this week by government officials.
"I much prefer 800 feet to 1,200 feet," said Jerome Dodson. "I like the idea of a new transit terminal marked by a new tower. But I probably wouldn't want it too high."
Dodson, a mutual funds manager, played tour guide Saturday - leading three dozen people through the shadowy canyons of San Francisco's office core, past at least three buildings that in different eras held bragging rights as the highest peak on the skyline. The tour also included the Transamerica Pyramid, which at 853 feet currently wears the city's tallest-building crown.
Not on the itinerary: the block of Mission Street between First and Fremont streets where three teams of developers and architects are competing for the right to build what could be the tallest skyscraper west of Chicago. The winning team in return would design and help pay for construction of a new mass-transit terminal that someday might serve trains as well as buses from across the region.
The competition is being held by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, a regional board that controls the block. The teams propose towers ranging in height from 1,200 to 1,375 feet while offering as much as $350 million for the land. On Thursday, the authority's directors will select one team with which it will negotiate, the aim being a tower and terminal both ready by 2014.
There's support for the project from city politicians and planners, and even environmental groups that see dense transit-friendly development as a way to get people out of their cars. But on Dodson's tour, reactions ranged from lukewarm to ice-cold.
"I'd have to say I'm totally against it," said a man named Tom who moved to San Francisco after college in 1965. "What's happening right now south of Market Street is a total disaster, as far as I'm concerned. ... The whole thing to me seems to send the message, 'Go ahead and screw us, just leave the money at the door.' "
Not everyone was so adamant; indeed, the most recent wave of growth won praise from several people taking part in the three-hour tour sponsored by the San Francisco Museum & Historical Society.
"I like a lot of the new buildings South of Market and in South Beach. It's a lot better now," said Laura Shine-Revilock, who lives on Parnassus Heights and moved to the city in 1989.
Still, she questioned the wisdom of erecting a super-tall tower on landfill in earthquake country. She also is concerned that too many new towers could undo the positive changes.
"One canyon-like section like this is OK," Shine-Revilock said, standing on Montgomery Street, the heart of the Financial District, "but I'd hate to see us become like Manhattan, one tall building after another. We've opened up the South of Market area - there's a lot of sun and vibrancy - and I'd hate to see that taken away."
Though the future was a presence on the tour, Dodson's narration focused squarely on the past.
In addition to pointing out distinctive facades, or having people crowd entryways to glimpse the lobbies inside, Dodson entertained the group with trivia about bankruptcies and mergers and financial skulduggery that went on behind the masonry walls.
He also made no effort to hide his affection for the stately buildings that date from before World War II. On Market Street, Dodson paused to linger over the terra cotta details of Bliss & Faville's Matson Building from 1921 - and then to direct attention to the 1983 Federal Reserve Bank next door, because "it illustrates why people don't like modern architecture. It's a blocky plain building with no redeeming feature, in my opinion."
Afterward, Dodson confessed that classical buildings are his favorite - but also that he thinks local architecture has improved since modern slabs filled the skyline in the 1960s and '70s.
Except for the height, he backs the Transbay design jury's preference for a 1,200-foot tower by Pelli Clarke Pelli that would taper as it rises, obelisk-like: "I like the simplicity of it all."
One member of the tour said he takes the changes in stride.
"If you protect everything, your city can't grow," said Ted Lee, a San Francisco native born in 1971, the year the Transamerica Pyramid was built. "As long as the city makes an effort to retain the best historical buildings, new ones are fine. Seventy years from now, they'll be history, too."
His thoughts on the Transbay Terminal competition?
"I actually don't have much of an opinion," Lee shrugged. Then he paused. "A building taller than the Pyramid might be too high, though."
E-mail John King at jking@sfchronicle.com.
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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg.../BA10S7548.DTL[/quote]
PS: Tom, you're an idiot--and so are all these other Luddites. Perhaps we should build altars all around the base of the "pyramid" so that worshippers could make sacrificial offerings.
EVERYBODY--Time to tell John King how wrong he is and what WE think:
His email address is jking@sfchronicle.com
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