a couple more things from this weekend's wander...
the scaffolding has come down on the Fourth St side of the CVR building (still up on the south side):
and, the scaffolding has started to come down on the south side of the large parking garage, revealing this:
same design texture as for the elevator column/stairwell element on the other side. looks better than ex-Pfizer, and it's a parking garage!
you can also barely see that the new street running in front of this side is paved black. looked like they were getting ready to stripe it as of yesterday. and they've already taken down the overhead electric lines; the sign in the pic is a left-over.
on the north side, more extensive digging work going on than it appeared last week (looking west. garage on left, UCSF housing and Helen Diller center across Third St in the distance):
seems that in addition to whatever sidewalk treatment they're working on, they are probably going to put in a small access road there, since they've removed a chunk of sidewalk where the outlet to Third St will be:
here is a shot looking back (east) from that missing sidewalk spot on Third:
you can't see in the pic, but the earth-moving seems to include the area off to the left behind the construction trailers, all the way to the back of ex-Pfizer. by last week they had removed some short trees from that area that had been there since before development days. I'm a little curious to see what all comes of this.
I was a little surprised as I walked that at different sites, people were on the job on a Saturday. at the garage behind Gladstone, the welders were at work putting together the metal framing around the stairwells. you can also see that since the last photo, they have installed wire meshing (for climbing plants?), for example on the outside of the yellow elevator shaft.
and here from the northeast corner:
those stairs just hanging out there, and the catwalks on the upper two levels really intrigue me. I'm liking the industrial look, and, not sure why, but the openness just seems jaunty to me. they may end up enclosing it all, but I hope they don't. in any case, for me, this garage so far looks cool, but still does not stray too far from what it is. I'm not saying this well, but thinking of the other big garage, although I appreciate the efforts to make it more interesting (and it is definitely much better than if they hadn't done anything), I think it tries too hard. the sheer bulk of that one made it more challenging too. neither one will actually be that visible when everything else has been built out, but I think Gladstone employees win big time on this one!
it occurred to me the other day that in the maps for MB, there is a road shown in approximately the location of all the digging south of 16th St (dividing parcels 38-9 from 40), so wonder if the sewer work is a first stage for putting that in. actually, I'll have to go back and check whether the recent medical center plans have affected that - seem to remember a big parking lot over there in drawings. this was new since the last time I had wandered by there:
