SAN FRANCISCO | Mission Bay

[WildCowboy]

Yep, I really can't stand 409/499 Illinois. I was hoping it would get better as they got further long, but I'm still not impressed. I think the angled walls were to allow them to squish the building as close together as possible, but still allow light to reach between them. Not a fan though.

DD's shots show pretty well the clash of colors. The "greenish" window panels inside the stone areas (and, inexplicably, also outside those areas in some places) just look sickly compared to the gray panels that dominate the rest of the buildings. There are even a couple of "yellowish" panels in places that make the hodge-podge look even worse.

And the mechanical screening up top isn't completely opaque, so the steel framing for those panels is visible when the light is behind them. The screening is still going up, so maybe they have plans for the inside that will make things opaque, but I'm not optimistic.

The "Chiquita Banana" sculpture outside 500 Terry Francois is the one I mentioned briefly a while ago...it's by Richard Deutsch and called "Hulls."

[KVNBKLYN]

Alexandria has a new (at least new to me) website with renderings of all the buildings they have in various stages of planning and construction at Mission Bay: http://alexandriamissionbay.com/

It's buggy and not all the links work, but you can see most of the renderings if you click on Properties and Download Property Information Sheets.

Some of these renderings have been posted here before, but most of them are new (again, at least to me).

[peanut gallery]

^^^That's pretty slick. Thanks for sharing!

[WildCowboy]

Ooh, nice...we've been waiting a long time for something like this to show up. I assume it's slightly out-of-date, as it advertises 1500 Owens as being available in late 2008, while similar promotional materials now list it as early 2009, but still very nice to have on hand.

It's the first time I've seen renderings of some of those "North Campus" buildings along Third Street. Looking forward to seeing info on the "East" and "South" campuses posted soon!

[WildCowboy]

Yes, it's time for a special treat. WildCowboy got a new camera (just a cheapo point-and-shoot), and he brought it to work to try it out!

1500 Owens shot from the east:



555 Mission Rock shot from the south:



UCSF's Diller Cancer Research Building shot from the southwest:



409/499 Illinois (Fibrogen's future home) shot from the northwest:



The parking garage under construction at 450 South Street with Old Navy (550 Terry Francois), 500 Terry Francois, and Radiance heading off into the distance:



A shot up Third Street. You can see part of the patch of land that will be Alexandria's "North Campus", the strip of land that will be The Commons, Radiance Phase II piles, Seawall Lot 337, and AT&T Park.



UCSF's Rutter Center and Rock Hall, with 1500 Owens visible in the distance between them:



UCSF's Byers Hall in the foreground attached to the larger Genentech Hall:



409/499 Illinois shot from the northeast:



Installing a window panel on 499 Illinois:



409 Illinois shot from the southeast:



The SS Cape Gibson



And finally, a shot of the bizarre mishmash of window panel colors on 409 Illinois. The clash of grayish and greenish sections bothers me enough, but then there's also a yellowish section:

[peanut gallery]

YES!!! Finally you succumbed! These are great -- the most comprehensive view of Mission Bay we've seen. Hopefully, you can always take it with you on your explorations of the area. You never know what little interesting scene you might chance upon.

Is Rock hall the one on the right:


If so, I like it (at least the corner that's visible here). It might be my favorite building in Mission Bay so far.

[BTinSF]

I clicked through to Cowboy's link on the Cape Gibson and noted this photo:


Source: http://www.cape-gibson.navy.mil/

which reminded me all too intensely of the days when they used to do to ME (in a bosun's chair) what they are doing to that net full of cargo. When I was the doctor for a frigate squadron, there were essentially 2 ways to get from one ship to the other out in the middle of the ocean: helocopter or highline (as in the picture). I don't much care for flying so I chose highline when feasible.

[JAC6]

Great photos, Wild. Thanks.

[WildCowboy]

Originally Posted by peanut gallery

Is Rock hall the one on the right:

If so, I like it (at least the corner that's visible here). It might be my favorite building in Mission Bay so far.

Yes, Arthur and Toni Rembe Rock Hall is the most visible one there on the right side of the screen. The South Building of the housing complex is just peeking in there on the edge of the photo, but the light brown travertine one with dark brown travertine on the top floor is Rock Hall, a lab building opened in early 2004 and designed by Cesar Pelli.

I actually don't find it all that interesting...it's basically just a stone rectangle, with a slight offset in the middle. Granted, constrictions imposed by the lab space needs limit what you can do, but I like Byers Hall, the glassy one of similar size prominently visible in the next photo, much better, even if the neighbors made UCSF turn off the night lighting on the stacks.

[peanut gallery]

^^^Well, you're seeing these buildings everyday, from all angles, so you have a much more complete perspective. I think what i like about it, at least from this angle, is that it looks less high-tech, Silicon Valley campus-like, and more old-school SF than anything else I've seen in Mission Bay. I am only going off one photo though. I'll have to go down there and check it out in person.

[peanut gallery]

Originally Posted by BTinSF

I clicked through to Cowboy's link on the Cape Gibson and noted this photo...which reminded me all too intensely of the days when they used to do to ME (in a bosun's chair) what they are doing to that net full of cargo. When I was the doctor for a frigate squadron, there were essentially 2 ways to get from one ship to the other out in the middle of the ocean: helocopter or highline (as in the picture). I don't much care for flying so I chose highline when feasible.

That looks like fun! Really. Although I can't imagine you'd prefer it to flying in a helicopter. It seems like if flying isn't your thing, this would be 10 times worse. You've had some interesting adventures, BT. Any photos from those days?

[WildCowboy]

From the transcript of Alexandria's earnings conference call a couple of days ago:

1500 Owens: They have a 50,000 square foot commitment from an "institutional anchor"...that's ~40% of the building. They also have "strong active interest" for the rest of it.

455 Mission Bay Boulevard South: They have an executed letter-of-intent from a "very prominent user" for over 100,000 square feet...one of the two connected buildings in the initial Buildings 2/3 project.

1600 Owens: They are in "late stage negotiations" regarding "most or all" of the building. This is a ~240,000 square-foot building...I believe it's 10 stories, 160 feet.

[viewguysf]

Originally Posted by WildCowboy

From the transcript of Alexandria's earnings conference call a couple of days ago:

1500 Owens: They have a 50,000 square foot commitment from an "institutional anchor"...that's ~40% of the building. They also have "strong active interest" for the rest of it.

455 Mission Bay Boulevard South: They have an executed letter-of-intent from a "very prominent user" for over 100,000 square feet...one of the two connected buildings in the initial Buildings 2/3 project.

1600 Owens: They are in "late stage negotiations" regarding "most or all" of the building. This is a ~240,000 square-foot building...I believe it's 10 stories, 160 feet.

That's great news about demand still being high--just what we need to keep driving this whole area forward! It has definitely become one of the City's main economic engines and a powerful positive force spotlighting the Bay Area yet again.

[peanut gallery]

Yes, just like the last time the economy flatlined, biotech seems to be weathering it just fine. Let's hope that continues.

[BTinSF]

Originally Posted by peanut gallery

That looks like fun! Really. Although I can't imagine you'd prefer it to flying in a helicopter. It seems like if flying isn't your thing, this would be 10 times worse. You've had some interesting adventures, BT. Any photos from those days?

I've got about 6 carousels of Kodachrome slides in my closet. This was before digital photography and I haven't concluded anybody else wants to see 'em enough to pay the cost of digitizing them. I used to give talks in elementary schools about Antarctica--before everybody and their brother in law started going there.

[BTinSF]

Originally Posted by peanut gallery

Yes, just like the last time the economy flatlined, biotech seems to be weathering it just fine. Let's hope that continues.

I am of the opinion that the "big pharma" companies are going to have to start buying up biotechs wholesale because they seem to have lost the ability to discover new drugs on their own and that's the only way they can recreate a "pipeline" to replace all their big sellers as those go off-patent. Unfortunately, that may cut down on the companies headquartered in the Bay Area although I imagine they'll still want lab space here because they get a lot of their inspiration through associations with UCSF, Berkeley, and Stanford.

[BTinSF]

Originally Posted by WildCowboy

From the transcript of Alexandria's earnings conference call a couple of days ago

Alexandria may be an example of a great company but a somewhat scary stock. Unlike other REITs, they seem teflon-coated:


Source: http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/adv...RE&time=&freq=

I've been buying the REITs that have got knocked down, but this one is too rich although in the late 90's and early 2000s I owned it.

[WildCowboy]

More work going on on Alexandria's "West Campus" along 280. There was a surface parking lot for 1700 Owens tucked in behind it and the Gladstone Institutes. That's been shut down and surrounded by construction fencing, and they're bringing in equipment for starting what should be the parking garage planned for that location. Whether it's just preliminary soil testing/test piles or full-blown construction, I don't know yet.

They've created a new surface lot further north next to under-construction 1500 Owens, so the 1700 Owens folks have a bit further to walk until they get their garage completed.

They've also started fencing off and cleaning up some of the footprint for 1600 Owens. I believe they were issued a permit for test piledriving a couple of weeks ago, so we may see that happening soon.

[WildCowboy]

They are indeed working on test piles for both 1600 Owens and the parking garage. They're doing drilled piles instead of driven ones, so the ears of their neighbors are being spared. One rig has been moving back and forth between the two sites over the past couple of days to work on them.

One thing I'm not quite clear on is that the new "driveway" to the new temporary surface parking lot back in there goes straight through the 1600 Owens building footprint, and they've been drilling piles on both sides of it. My guess is that they are working on the permanent access road that will extend along the west side of the site next to 280 and the current driveway is rather temporary.

UCSF's Diller Building is also coming along. The external hoist was removed last week and they're busy patching up that section of the façade. Scaffolding has started being removed from the south side of the building.

Piledriving on the cardiovascular research building (CVRB) next door has paused after driving a bunch of piles at the southeast corner of the building's footprint. The ongoing centralized utility pipeline project appears to be doing some digging now to extend those lines onto the CVRB site.

And one last note: After the two tower cranes from Radiance Phase I were dismantled, they were moved to Bosa's main trailer HQ along Channel Street, where they sat for months. But the last couple of days have seen the pieces being loaded onto trucks and carted away. I initially hoped that they were moving them to the Radiance Phase II site, but that doesn't appear to be the case, so I have no idea where they've gone.

[peanut gallery]

Thanks for the updates. Don't forget to bring your camera to work.