SAN FRANCISCO | Mission Bay

[C.Lan]

It doesn't look forbidding to me, those palm trees make it look very lively. Do you mean because there's that camera at the intersection watching all the traffic?

[timbad]

Originally Posted by WildCowboy

Confirmation from the webcam that steel beams are indeed rapidly going up at the UCSF hospital site...

thanks WC! we are indeed at the next level of excitement with this one. will be fun to watch it go up over the next couple three years.

this is gonna be old news now, but I did wander over there yesterday to get this shot of the southeast corner and its new beams from Third:



in other news, they were working on the stone paving work under the new trees up on Channel (block 13) earlier this week:



here is just a random 'before' shot that might be interesting to look at in about three or four years, since it is taken from what will be the west end of the Commons - but is currently the remnant of Sixth which is no longer really a through street on either of its ends. looking east:



..and if anyone wanted a close-up of the glass going up on the curvy side of the neurosciences building:

[C.Lan]

Mission: has clearly got a lot going on, I hadn't heard about that nanosciences building. Not that the transit plans aren't probably more pressing for people in the area. Accomplished a lot, all things considered. Mission definitely needs a decent thoroughfare connecting it to the west: You probably want to avoid backups on octavia and the pedestrian concern makes sense. With some kind of traffic-light timing system you can probably avoid the turning difficulties. I am glad to see they're working on it though.

[timbad]

Originally Posted by pseudolus

That's a pretty forbidding streetscape for what I understand is supposed to be the principal north-south pedestrian-oriented street.

not sure if this will shift opinion or help clarify anything, but I'll throw this informal data out there:

width of Fourth at King (Caltrain Station): 24 steps
width of Fourth at bulb-outs near Strata (MB): 14 steps

it feels much different!

[peanut gallery]

I like the instant gratification of steel buildings. Thanks for the shots, timbad.

[C.Lan]

Is that in terms of feet or in parallel steps?

[timbad]

quite welcome!

forgot to mention also that the portion of block 5 that will be built on (i.e., that is not the children's park) now has fencing around it, with Bosa signs, that I'm pretty sure is new. no sign of any other activity there.

[timbad]

Originally Posted by C.Lan

Is that in terms of feet or in parallel steps?

that is casual walking across the street, regular strides. 24 walking steps to cross 4th at the Caltrain station; 14 walking steps to cross it using the bulb-outs in MB south of the creek. to me as a pedestrian, it does feel quite un-intimidating in the latter case. of course, traffic is fairly minimal still south of the creek.

[pseudolus]

I mean that the all blank walls and the way they loom over the narrow street makes it feel like a place you want to move through as quickly as possible rather than linger. It definitely feels like a back or side street.

[timbad]

Originally Posted by timbad

bike lane on Fourth complete and in use:

Originally Posted by pseudolus

That's a pretty forbidding streetscape for what I understand is supposed to be the principal north-south pedestrian-oriented street.

Originally Posted by pseudolus

I mean that the all blank walls and the way they loom over the narrow street makes it feel like a place you want to move through as quickly as possible rather than linger. It definitely feels like a back or side street.

it's true that in the pic, there is not too much that would entice a pedestrian (the wind also slams into the side of the cardiovascular building and makes walking along that side of the street feel like hitting a wall some days). but, in that shot we are looking into the UCSF end of Fourth, not the supposedly-more-inviting-for-people residential stretch to the north (which is entirely empty except for Strata). it's too bad that not *all* of Fourth could have been a great walking street, but I think some of the culprit is the necessity to put a lot of the mechanical equipment needed in a research building, that usually would go in a building's basement, on the ground floor instead due to the area being landfill. within the frame of the pic, the green you see on the right side is temporary, and will give way to a permanent building at some point (not that that will makes things any better, necessarily, but just to point out that that bit is not done yet). also, there are little open seating areas underneath the palm trees flanking the street on both sides and helping to mark the entrance to the campus - I think I've only ever seen anyone sitting in them once (being on the north side of their respective buildings/future buildings, they'll never be really sunny), but the area is still evolving.

further down Fourth in the distance, you do have the student residences with wide, pedestrian, Gene Friend Way on one side, and the Quad on the other. UCSF is trying to decide if they are going to construct the next phase of dorms across GF Way to make that little intersection more trafficked and lively. I'm certainly for that - with the right layout and attention particularly to how the building(s) hit(s) and interact(s) with both Fourth and the pedestrian walkway leading to the Muni stop on Third, there is potential for success.

[timbad]

Originally Posted by WildCowboy

Now this is interesting...high-speed rail plans could result in 280 being torn down north of 18th Street and turned into an Octavia-like boulevard.

I've seen some nasty backups on Octavia, so we'll have to see how this all pencils out.

definitely intriguing. I agree that this would soften the feel of King St, a plus. I had initially thought its impact would be huge on removing much of the separation between MB and neighborhoods to the west, but my second thought is that I share other posters' concerns that traffic back-ups would still leave a problem there. of course, a great way to mitigate that is to provide frequent, speedy, clean, quiet (i.e., electric) train service from the south that also continues downtown. I would root for making sure that the train option is smooth and convenient enough that it would siphon off a chunk of the drivers, and the rest would settle into manageable patterns. I think it could work and the neighborhood would benefit.

I assume Seventh would comprise part of the potential boulevard. It's already wide, as can be seen in this shot, looking south from just south of Townsend St. the existing 280 overpass, and at-grade Caltrain tracks, are on the left, with Mission Bay beyond them out of the pic. the freeway would somehow come down more or less straight ahead in the far distance under this idea:

[WildCowboy]

Article on the Salesforce campus...sound terrific so far. Large public piazza with retail and other aspects to draw people in and connect Mission Bay to the waterfront. City officials love what they've seen so far, and looks like Salesforce wants to move quickly.

Looking forward to seeing some renderings.

[peanut gallery]

^Sounds like we don't need to wait too much longer - June 9. Can't wait!

It says the tallest will be 160 ft stepping down toward the water. So that would be what 10-12 floors for office? Looking forward to more variety of height in MB. Everything so far is very similar. I like everything I read in that article, and this sounds promising:

The result is that visually the open space in the Salesforce campus, when combined with the waterfront area,will “read like a series of public parks,” Kahn said.
...snip...
The overall design starkly contrasts with many insular suburban — and also urban — office parks and corporate campuses.

It's great that they are really striving to blend into the surrounding neighborhood, rather than make it look nice but make sure you know you're not welcome unless you work there -- especially since they will be turning those two streets into pedestrian plazas.

[WildCowboy]

timbad's going to like this one...

The city has received (PDF) a grant for brownfields cleanup that will allow them to move forward on the Mission Bay Boulevard roundabout and the connector roads under 280, along with park parcel P10 located in the center of the roundabout.

[WildCowboy]

And here (PDF) is a bunch more information on the police/fire station set for Block 8. Some renderings and floor plans at the end of the document.

[WildCowboy]

And thirdly, here (PDF) are details on the Block 2 residential project by UDR.

[peanut gallery]

Great finds, Cowboy! I love the renderings for Block 2. I like that they're breaking it down to look like two buildings and the design of each half. The halves are quite different yet complement each other very nicely.

[northbay]

great looking projects!

[ElDuderino]

A Bit Of Color On (And For) Salesforce's Campus In Mission Bay



From John King with respect to Legorreta and Legoretta’s colorful vision for Salesforce's 14-acre campus coming to Mission Bay:

The scheme that’s evolved has a wider range of colors and window patterns than the firm’s norm, and most building’s would come wrapped in stone or terra cotta rather than stucco. They’d also include brash twists – a corner fractured by stepped-back terraces here, a stone-clad canopy perched on a 90-foot-high column there. A stack of meeting rooms at the southwest corner of the campus is wrapped in a mesh-like purple skin.

At least three of the 14 acres would be publicly accessible at all hours, centered on a broad plaza leading from Third Street to a planned bayside neighborhood park. The office buildings along Third Street would include shops, a child care center and restaurants.

And the key concept, an open campus that embraces the evolving neighborhood.



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http://socketsite.com/

[peanut gallery]

An early peek! Here are a couple more from SFGate: