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Old Posted May 3, 2019, 12:10 AM
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Pedestrian Pedestrian is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: San Francisco
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Originally Posted by woodrow View Post
I have been following this thread for awhile and this entire project is just mind blowing to me. They have practically built an entire new city. I love how the streets cut through and it isn't some dead end isolated burbs in the city layout.

Questions - are there numerous developers involved? Was it a big piece of property chopped up and sold separately? Who is overseeing this generally?

Finally, it would be awesome if you awesome photographers who have been taking awesome photos would go back to your no doubt awesome archives and create side by side before and after sets! I know, I am being greedy.
The property was formerly an industrial district "home to shipyards, canneries, a sugar refinery and various warehouses", including a large Southern Pacific railyard, according to Wikipedia although the site was cleared decades ago. The city basically planned the entire area and then turned the land over to Catellus Development Corporation as a Redevelopment Project (under California's old Redevelopment Agency law, now dead) which sought sub-developers for individual parcels (including both for-profit and non-profit/below market developers for housing sites). The initial plan called for lots of housing (around 6000 units as I recall) and much of the rest of the space was supposed to be for biomedical uses mostly--they were seeking to promote some of the biomedical outfits concentrated in South San Francisco and Emeryville to move north and west respectively.

But before the biomedical uses could really become established except for a couple of parcels bought and built out by Alexandria REIT which builds/owns/leases biomedical research facilities, some regular tech companies including Salesforce began seeking to buy parcels (Salesforce ultimately sold what they had planned for their headquarters and moved downtown, leasing the Salesforce Tower and buying other nearby properties but the likes of Uber are still in Mission Bay).

And the big enchillada was the University of CA at San Francisco which was seeking to expand dramatically from its campus on Parnassus Heights and ultimately sought to put the expansion in Mission Bay which they have done. That fit well with the biomedical theme, of course. They have ultimately built out research facilities as well as a new hospital, student housing and a student center.

The last piece of the puzzle was the Golden State Warriors which were not originally envisioned as part of the mix. When the city succeeded in luring them from their aging Oakland facilities, they first looked at Pier 32 closer to downtown but the cost of rehabbing an aging pier and political opposition to putting a non-water-oriented use on the pier blocked them so they looked for another site and found it in the Salesforce Mission Bay property, which that company no longer wanted to use and was looking to sell. The Warriors faced a lot of opposition at this site too, mainly from people claiming an interest in minimizing traffic around UC's new hospital (though that motive was suspect IMHO). But they overcame it after a court fight.
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