SAN FRANCISCO | Mission Bay

[northbay]

Originally Posted by viewguysf

I've been wondering the same thing. Dave, where are you? We miss your awesome shots!

his wife/gf probably complained that he was spending too much time on skyscraperpage and she wasnt getting enough attention

just talking from personal experience

[peanut gallery]

Ah, so that's where you've been. I've noticed several formerly regular SF posters who haven't been around much lately. I wonder if it's because of the slowdown in development. Or maybe it's just people moving on to other things.

[viewguysf]

Originally Posted by northbay420

his wife/gf probably complained that he was spending too much time on skyscraperpage and she wasnt getting enough attention

just talking from personal experience

Hmmm...wonder what he's taking pics of now?!

[BTinSF]

Friday, February 13, 2009
SFPD headquarters pick: Mission Bay
$200M project would add police presence to biotech hotbed
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen San Francisco Business Times

San Francisco officials have identified Mission Bay as the top choice for a new $200 million police headquarters, a project that would bring a busy civic use to a neighborhood that has been defined by housing and life science development.

A new San Francisco Justice Facilities Improvement Study by architects Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum and Mark Cavagnero Associates identifies 1.5 acres of city-owned land on the southwest corner of Third Street and Mission Rock as the “preferred location” for a 265,000-square-foot building that could house police headquarters, the Southern District police station, a fire station, and parking for 171 police vehicles.

In addition to the Mission Bay site, the study looked at two secondary locations: a parcel at Third and Evans streets and another on Bryant Street, between Fourth and Fifth. Both of those sites would require the city to acquire privately owned property.

Built in 1985, the current Hall of Justice does not meet seismic codes and is half the size needed to meet standards set by the California Correctional Standards Authority.

Moving a major public agency to the nascent Mission Bay would create hundreds of construction jobs and could help bolster retail and housing projects in Mission Bay. Immediately south of the preferred site is Seawall Lot 337, where a development team headed by the San Francisco Giants, Wilson Meany Sullivan and Kenwood Development is planning to build 875 rental units, 240,000 square feet of retail and 1 million square feet of office space. On the other side of the site is Bosa Development’s Radiance condo project.

Kelly Kahn, Mission Bay project manager for the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, said the Mission Bay plan has always called for a small district police and fire station on the parcel, which is already home to a small historic brick fire house. But the notion of also building the police headquarters on the site emerged recently in discussions with the Department of Public Works’ Bureau of Project Management, which oversees public construction projects for the city. Kahn called the police headquarters idea “incredibly preliminary” but “generally well within what is contemplated for the block.” She said “at this point, our reaction has been pretty positive.”

“Our instinct is that we could do a really architecturally excellent and strong civic building there,” said Kahn. “We have our housing and biotech jobs and our parks and our supermarket and our library. A strong civic building could really add to the mix of uses, which is definitely part of the vision of Mission Bay.”

The agencies currently housed at the decrepit Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant St. would be split into two campuses, one possibly in Mission Bay and one near the current building, under the scenario outlined in the study. The cluster near the current Hall of Justice would include an 828-bed replacement jail, as well as offices for the district attorney, public defender, and police investigations and traffic divisions. The report outlines several possibilities for a new replacement jail, one to the east of the current Hall of Justice at Sixth and Bryant and one directly across Bryant Street.

Quickest scenario means 2014

Under the implementation schedule, construction on a Mission Bay police headquarters could start in 2012 and — under the quickest scenario — police brass could move in by early 2014. The other criminal justice campus would be built out in a longer period of time. The study calls for the new jail, with an estimated price tag of between $439 million and $444 million, to be completed by 2016. The other Hall of Justice facilities — police investigations and local justice agencies — would not be ready for occupancy until 2020.

But even though construction is years away, the new public safety complex is already a hot topic among city architects. The city has put out a request for qualifications to design the new police headquarters, which would be funded through a bond measure put to voters next November. The proposals were due on Feb. 2 and nine design teams submitted, according to Jim Buker, project manager of the Department of Public Works.

While the teams have not been disclosed, architecture sources said those seeking the assignment include: KMD Architects with Tom Eliot Fisch; Beverly Prior Architects with HellerManus; Studios Architecture; Skidmore Owings Merrill; Perkins + Will; Cannon Design; and the HOK/Cavagnero joint venture that compiled the study. The design teams will be interviewed the last week in February, and five finalists will be picked.

“We’re in a recession and this is a big job and a city job, which always get a lot of interest,” said Douglas Tom, a principal with Tom Eliot Fisch, who added that the level of interest was a “sign of the times.”

Other city buildings as well

In addition to the SFPD headquarters, Mission Bay could become home to the city’s 72,000-square-foot office of the medical examiner and the police department’s forensics lab, according to the facilities improvement study. The study says that the facility would be in leased space and that “planning for the facility is well under way.”

The city has been in negotiations to lease space in 1600 Owens St., one of the entitled life science buildings Alexandria Real Estate Equities plans to build in the biotech cluster, but those talks slowed down last summer as the credit crisis froze new commercial real estate development, according to San Francisco Director of Real Estate Amy Brown.

“It looked pretty promising, but everything came to a screeching halt when the credit dried up,” said Brown. “It may get back on track, depending on what happens with credit markets and development in general.”

Alexandria CEO Joel Marcus publicly stated Oct. 30 of last year that it was putting several Mission Bay projects on hold despite having tenants willing to lease between 200,000 and 300,000 square feet of build-to-suit space.

Email J.K. Dineen at jkdineen@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4971

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...ml?t=printable

So I wonder how Radiance buyers feel about having a fire station and police HQ next door--i.e. fire engines screaming by their high end homes at all hours. At least they apparently won't be getting the main jail with its less than high end customers as well.

[peanut gallery]

Sorry to nitpick, but JK sure messed up the location of this lot.

the southwest corner of Third Street and Mission Rock

On the other side of the site is Bosa Development’s Radiance condo project.

Immediately south of the preferred site is Seawall Lot 337

That would put it in the middle of China Basin. I think JK meant to say immediately north of the preferred site is Seawall Lot 337. If Lot 337 is immediately north and other side of the site is Radiance, then he's actually talking about the southeast corner of 3rd and Mission Rock, not southwest.

Anyway, not being a Radiance resident, I think this would be a great addition to Mission Bay. It needs more varied uses. I hope the architecture creates more variety for the area as well.

[Gordo]

Agreed with pg and the article - a civic use in the area would be nice and help generate some more daytime activity for retail and services (and I'm sure the folks at the police headquarters wouldn't mind being practically right next door to the ballpark).

[SFView]

Originally Posted by peanut gallery

Ah, so that's where you've been. I've noticed several formerly regular SF posters who haven't been around much lately. I wonder if it's because of the slowdown in development. Or maybe it's just people moving on to other things.

Yes, that's sort have been it for me. There isn't so much new development news as there used to be. Family and work tends to pull me away a bit, but I still continue to lurk. It seems that others also have school and work, etc. that pulls them away. I remember several regular posters that have or almost completely disappeared from the SF threads since the time I joined SSP in 2006.

[Kingofthehill]

How do you get to Mission Bay via MUNI?

[BTinSF]

Originally Posted by Kingofthehill

How do you get to Mission Bay via MUNI?

Take the T-Third LRV which you can catch at any of the Market St. stations (underground) or along the Embarcadero (in the median) south of Market St.: http://transit.511.org/static/provid...2200722226.pdf

[WildCowboy]

Originally Posted by peanut gallery

Sorry to nitpick, but JK sure messed up the location of this lot.

That would put it in the middle of China Basin. I think JK meant to say immediately north of the preferred site is Seawall Lot 337. If Lot 337 is immediately north and other side of the site is Radiance, then he's actually talking about the southeast corner of 3rd and Mission Rock, not southwest.

Absolutely correct...this site is on the southeast corner of Third and Mission Rock, and as mentioned the brick SFFD toy drive headquarters building occupies a portion of the site. The 1.5 acre site, known as Block 8 in the Mission Bay plan, has been slated for a police and/or fire station from the very beginning. Nice to see plans for it start to move forward, as there have been doubts about whether the city would ever be able to move forward on the larger public projects (namely this and the public school site at the northwest corner of the UCSF campus).

[WildCowboy]

I've moved to NC, so I'm relying on you guys and anything else I can dig up on the Internet for updates. Checking UCSF's CVRB webcam (at least during daylight hours), I see a red crane peeking out from over the cancer building in the background. Is this for the Pfizer complex at 555 Mission Bay Blvd S? I assume it is, as it looked like they were about done with the foundation when I left at the end of January.

Anything else new? 1500 Owens should be wrapping up...haven't heard an announcement on which biotech company is taking most of the space there yet.

[WildCowboy]

UCSF gets $125 million for the Mission Bay hospital. Terrific chunk of change, but they need a lot more.

http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...16/story3.html

[BTinSF]

Friday, March 20, 2009
Mission Bay’s Fourth Street could be its fast lane
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen

Residents moving into the Strata at Mission Bay have bocce courts and barbecue pits, twinkling downtown views and a 24-hour gym.

But as the first renters took up residency in the 192-unit apartment complex this week, one small detail was missing: Fourth Street, the brand-new boulevard leading to the Strata, is still closed as construction crews wrap up the final touches. Phil Owen, president of Mission Bay Development Group, which is responsible for building the street, said it would open by early April.

“We are just finishing up the sidewalk, striping the streets, going through a punch list,” said Owen.

Strata, at 1201 Fourth St., is the first development to open on what is Mission Bay’s next frontier, a half-mile stretch of Fourth Street going from Mission Creek to the southern edge of Mission Bay at 16th Street. While it is not every day a new street is built in an older city like San Francisco, Fourth Street is especially significant because it was conceived as a central shopping and leisure boulevard for Mission Bay. Planners see it as the neighborhood’s answer to 24th Street in Noe Valley or Chestnut Street in the Marina: a hub of neighborhood commerce tailored to pedestrians and cyclists.

During the Strata’s opening weekend March 14 and 15, developer Urban Housing Group signed 15 leases and had 55 groups tour the property. The developer aims to lease 25 units a month, putting the company on pace to lease the entire building in eight to 10 months, according to Dan Deibel, Urban Housing Group’s vice president of development.

The Strata brings to 723 the number of housing units in Mission Bay South. Bosa Development has 99 units at the Radiance but has put its next phases on hold until market conditions improve. University of California, San Francisco, has completed 431 units of student housing.

Given that it will be a few years until Fourth Street flowers as a shopping and dining strip, Urban Housing Group pumped more money into amenities and common space than they might have otherwise. The Strata has a 20,000-square-foot courtyard with gardens, stretching areas and communal rooms for cooking, entertaining and movie watching. Deibel said it was important to give the building “buzz and cachet” to lure people to a part of Mission Bay that is still only half developed.

“We knew we were going to be south of the channel. And so we gave a lot of thought to creating a destination community here where you come home at night and you feel comfortable with everything you have here,” said Deibel.

The Strata is Urban Housing Group’s second San Francisco development. The developer sold the 193-unit Edgewater Luxury Apartments at 355 Berry St. for $115 million in May 2008 to United Dominion Realty Trust. The $595,855 per apartment price tag was record breaking.

While rents have softened in recent months, the San Francisco apartment community has held up much better than for-sale housing. In particular, the Mission Bay submarket, which includes AvalonBay’s Mission Bay communities and developments like South Beach Marina and Bay Village, all have occupancy rates above 90 percent, Deibel said. Average asking rents are about $3.25 a square foot at the Strata, about 10 percent lower than they would have been a year ago. Units range from $2,100 to just under $4,000 a month.

“We are at market,” said Deibel. “San Francisco had been growing at a pretty good clip, and I’d say the last six months it’s been flat. So we lost six months of the growth we planned. It’s a competitive market, and we will be competitive as well.”

On the retail side, Urban Housing is looking for a white-tablecloth restaurant, as well as other neighborhood-serving retail businesses. Brokers from Cornish & Carey Commercial have been touring the property with restaurant owners and had one deal fairly far along before the economy soured last year.

“Now that the Strata is open, we are looking forward to a lot of positive activity, and certainly the opening of Fourth Street will help as well,” said Marissa Miller of Cornish & Carey. “Once the street is open, tenants will be able to get a feel for how great Mission Bay will be.”


Email J.K. Dineen at jkdineen@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4971

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...23/story5.html

[BTinSF]

Socketsite is displaying a photo of palm trees being planted on 3rd St in Mission Bay:


Source: http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2....html#comments

I guess they are the same or a similar species to the ones nearby at AT&T Park. Anyway, I like 'em.

[WildCowboy]

And that looks like the Pfizer building going up in the background. Seems to be going up fast...nice!

[BTinSF]

Friday, April 17, 2009
Promise of new connections rises with buildings
Institutes, companies to mix with clinicians
San Francisco Business Times - by Ron Leuty

Mission Bay is slowly but surely morphing into a one-stop health-care shop, as more research institutes play a vital role in transforming basic science into bedside treatments.

Institutes for cancer, orthopedics, cardiovascular and neurosciences are opening, under construction or moving forward with planning at the Mission Bay campus of the University of California, San Francisco. They follow on sites like the J. David Gladstone Institutes’ cardiovascular, virology and immunology, and neurological centers.

The institutes also come with the promise of linking with companies, patients and patient advocates, particularly as UCSF pushes on with plans to open a $1.3 billion women’s, children’s and cancer hospital with 289 beds in 2014.

“It makes all the sense in the world for us to be there,” said Frank McCormick, director of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and its research institute.

The 162,000-square-foot building along Third Street that houses the cancer center and research institute officially opens June 2.

It’s a matter of convenience, since some lab researchers also see patients, but it also helps change culture when clinical practitioners and lab people are on the same campus, McCormick said. “It really does change the way people think about what they’re doing.”

The cancer center is on the northeastern edge of UCSF’s Mission Bay campus. Next to it, construction is under way on the $254 million, 236,000-square-foot Cardiovascular Research Institute.

Across Third Street, Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. is building a 210,000-square-foot building that will house Pfizer Inc.’s Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center, which is looking at stem cells, peptides, proteins and emerging technologies like RNA interference as well as new ways of delivering vaccines.

The hospital will be a stone’s throw to the south. A couple-minute stroll down the campus’ plaza leads to either UCSF’s neuroscience center — which could house nearly 600 employees and students by mid-2011 — or the Gladstone Institutes.

It’s those potential linkages between patients, researchers, clinicians and companies that excite David Hartman, president of the Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Northern California chapter. In fact, he’s already seen it work.

Soon after the society moved its offices in August from Oakland to the first floor of Alexandria’s 1700 Owens St., Hartman ran into Gladstone Institutes President Dr. Robert Mahley in the hallway. Gladstone, though based next door at 1650 Owens St., recently expanded its translational research center in the Alexandria building.

“We stumbled onto each other and just started talking,” Hartman said. “They have MS researchers there and we were sharing information about resources. We both are benefiting.”

The MS Society, with its focus on patients and their families, may presage the hospital’s ability to tie together different aspects of health care. For one, some $12.6 million in National Multiple Sclerosis Society research funds land back in the Bay Area, mostly in the UC system. And Dr. Doug Goodin, medical director of the UCSF Multiple Sclerosis Center, is on the MS Society’s local board of trustees.

The location also ultimately puts the MS Society closer to patients, who can cross 16th Street to the chapter’s classes or be directed to a UCSF researcher’s clinical trial.

It also could go a long way to showing philanthropists that their money is being put to good use.

“We have the ability to take a funder, walk them across the street and show them the research we’re enabling for them, then bring them back to see how the treatments are going to help people with MS by showing them the MS clinic or a program we have here,” Hartman said.

“That’s a gold mine for us. That’s a way of solidifying and making real where their investment is going.”


rleuty@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4939

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...ml?t=printable

[BTinSF]

Friday, April 17, 2009
Recession slows arrival of shopping, eating venues
San Francisco Business Times - by Sarah Duxbury

Any bona-fide neighborhood needs a place to shop and eat.

For Mission Bay, that’s going to be Fourth Street. But before it becomes the south-of-channel cousin to Noe Valley’s 24th Street or Chestnut Street in the Marina, buildings must be built, offices and apartments filled, and those retail leases signed.

And that means that Fourth Street’s retail rollout will be more than fashionably late. The recession has without question slowed Fourth Street’s rise, but those most bullish on the neighborhood, and most versed in its vision, are nevertheless sure that it will look good once it arrives.

The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and developers have worked hand in hand almost from the get-go to ensure that Fourth Street is fit for retail activity.

Strict limits — interior depths of at least 40 feet, maximum street frontages of 75 feet, high ceilings and stepped-back towers that allow light to reach the street — govern the ground floor architecture. Most spaces will max out at 3,000 square feet. Cosmetically, the sidewalks are generous and benches will provide shoppers resting spots. Metered parking will line both sides of the street, which some day will have between 80,000 and 100,000 square feet of retail.

“The vision of Fourth Street retail is neighborhood, independent owner-operators, goods and services spilling into the street,” said Erika Elliott, a broker with Cornish & Carey retail who is familiar with the Fourth Street vision. “It’s just like every other San Francisco neighborhood, except we have to build it.”

So far, only Urban Housing Group’s Strata is complete.

Retailer interest in the Strata’s 10,000 square feet has been muted, in part because retailers have been hard hit by the recession, and also because many wanted to see not only the building open, but the street itself.

“We knew going into the development that the built-out environment would need to be more in place to attract retail, and that’s what we’ve found,” said Dan Deibel, vice president of development for Urban Housing Group. “Our goal is to lease the retail over the next 12 months.” He hopes to have the restaurant space signed within six months.

Nor will Strata stand solo for long.

Mercy Housing’s building on Block 13 is under construction — it also will have up to 10,000 square feet of retail. UCSF’s housing building on Block 5 is likely the next to rise.

“It’s challenging. If the economy were better, there would be more buildings being built now and it would be easier for retailers,” said Amy Neches, project manager for Mission Bay. “One building is not a market. It’s tough out there.”

The other key to Fourth Street retail is that it will be strictly local. Chain stores are not welcome.

“We spend a lot of time with our developers talking about Fourth Street and talking about retail and talking about the vision and the importance of getting that mix that helps make this a really great place,” Neches said. “I jokingly tell them that nobody’s going to move to Mission Bay to be near a Jamba Juice. What makes people want to live here is this cool stuff going on at ground level. … They need to really buy into this as an amenity to sell their residential units.”

Among the kinds of shops planners see there are plenty of food outlets and everything else a neighborhood needs, from a dry cleaner to a drug store to a shoe repair. A wine shop or cheese shop would be nice, and so would a hardware store. Because the visionaries someday see young families in Mission Bay, some family-oriented retail is probable.

That the whole neighborhood is master planned makes it easier to engineer the “right” tenant mix.

“We don’t want to do what we had to do on King Street just to get it leased 10 years ago,” Elliott said of the national chains like Quizno’s that have set up shop just north of the channel.

The vision is therefore long, and planners simply hope that the landlords are as patient.

So far, they seem to be.

Today, the daytime population of Mission Bay is about 8,000, Elliott estimated. It will grow as Alexandria Real Estate Equities builds and fills buildings, and will grow again when the Radiance does its next phase, and it will keep growing for years to come.

As it grows, so too will retailer confidence and interest in Fourth Street. The “right” leases are hopefully not far behind.

sduxbury@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4963

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...20/focus3.html

[BTinSF]

Friday, April 17, 2009
Creating nightlife a challenge for businesses, neighborhood
San Francisco Business Times - by Vasanth Sridharan

Khaled Dajani already operates a successful sushi restaurant in Mission Bay called Tsunami Sushi. So it makes sense that when he started looking for a place to open his next venue, a whiskey bar, the fast-growing neighborhood was high on his list.

But Dajani, who owns and operates two restaurants, two bars, a wine store and a coffee shop in San Francisco with his brother Musa, said that opening his lounge in Mission Bay may not be possible.

Navigating the city’s bureaucracy is always a challenge, but it’s especially tough to get approvals for Mission Bay where he said there seems to be a predisposition against bars.

“It’s becoming hard, every time we’re opening a new venue, it seems it should be easier for us, but it seems like it’s getting harder,” he said. “The bureaucracy that’s getting established seems unbelievable. I will, in all honesty, gravitate towards buying an existing venue and transforming it instead of opening a new place in Mission Bay.”

Not everyone agrees with Dajani that opening a bar in Mission Bay has more hurdles than opening one elsewhere in the city. But many believe that nightlife and entertainment needs to be a part of the burgeoning neighborhood if it wants to attract young residents with disposable income. Thousands of housing units and millions of square feet of office and R&D space have sprung up in Mission Bay. But nightlife and entertainment have lagged behind.

Mission Rock Cafe, formerly Kelly’s Mission Rock, was a mainstay of the neighborhood long before it was “Mission Bay.” General Manager Ryan Faviñas said that the neighborhood part is important to remember if you want to be successful.

“It’s not just opening a bar in the city, it’s opening a bar in a neighborhood,” he said. “The neighborhood down here is very protective of itself. They want to keep it as safe as possible.”

Mission Rock Cafe has been a nightclub for the last several years, but has begun adding live music and is transitioning to a performance venue. Faviñas said that by working closely with the current residents of the neighborhood, the club has been successful. Still, he said that the transition hasn’t been seamless.

“Starting a venue in San Francisco isn’t exactly the easiest thing,” he said.

That being said, there are already some bars and venues in the area. In Mission Bay North, by the Giants’ AT&T Park, there are quite a few bars like MoMo’s and The Beacon. In Mission Bay South, which is the less developed side of the neighborhood, there are fewer — less than 10, said Marissa Miller, senior sales associate at Cornish & Carey Retail Services. Miller said that there are about 750 people living on UCSF’s campus in Mission Bay South, and another 3,000 to 4,000 residents. About 10,000 people are there working during the day.

But Terrance Allen, chairman of the San Francisco Late Night Coalition, a group that lobbies on behalf of bars and nightclubs, said that the troubles that operators like Dajani are facing are part of a larger problem plaguing the city. He said that it’s becoming harder for potential bar owners across the city to navigate the city and state bureaucracy in order to open a bar, and that he’s stepping up lobbying efforts to try to reform the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, which issues liquor licenses. The bureaucracy slows down the evolution in Mission Bay especially, because the area is just now being developed, so a nightlife scene has to be sculpted from scratch, so to speak, rather than built on an existing base.

Jocelyn Kane, deputy director of the Entertainment Commission, said that there is no sinister plan to curb nightlife in the city. And in Mission Bay, the holdup isn’t because of the bureaucracy.

“As it stands, I think the neighborhood has been marketed as a neighborhood, not necessarily as a part of the larger fabric of the nighttime areas,” she said. “And residential uses and nighttime uses don’t often go together.”

Kane also said that it’s too early in the evolution of Mission Bay to judge whether it will have a thriving nightlife. Once more people move in, then the bars and other venues will likely follow. She said that the police have been a little more restrictive with new venues recently, and that’s to make sure that everyone is safe when a venue does open. And she pointed out that there are definitely no policies specifically restricting nightlife.

Bob Davis, the director of the commission, sees more hope for Mission Bay’s nightlife, especially because the zoning allows for it. The noise ordinances allow the building department to take a stricter look at the specifications of residential development in the area and make sure that they have adequate soundproofing, which will help guard against complaints when nightlife does develop.

But what everyone agrees on is that Mission Bay will benefit from a nighttime economy, and the demand for one is increasing. Faviñas said that he’s recently seen an influx of people coming in, despite the economy. While Mission Rock used to be a place people drove into from other parts of the city, he’s seeing more local traffic.

“This is the new place to be,” he said.

But for Dajani, it might not be — especially not for a bar.

“Should we open another night venue, or should we go ahead and open a coffee shop? It’s way easier,” he said.

vsridharan@bizjournals.com

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...20/focus4.html

[BTinSF]

Friday, April 17, 2009
UC San Francisco scores on $250M center
Unique funding plan nets neuro building
San Francisco Business Times - by Ron Leuty

UCSF hopes to build a new Mission Bay home for its neuroscience programs on the foundation of innovative construction and financing deals.

The five-story, 237,000-square-foot building — connecting developer McCarthy Cook & Co., Nobel Prize-winning UCSF scientist Stan Prusiner and legendary angel investor Ron Conway — could be built by mid-2011, said Bruce Spaulding, senior vice chancellor of advancement and planning at the University of California, San Francisco.

The structure would be constructed on the west side of Rock Hall, between Fourth and Sixth streets, on UCSF’s growing Mission Bay campus. It would house UCSF’s neurology department — including Prusiner’s Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and other programs focusing on diseases ranging from dementia to multiple sclerosis — and the W.M. Keck Foundation Center for Integrative Neuroscience.

In all, the building could hold some 600 researchers, staff, students and patients.

“This is going to be one of the places, if not the place in the U.S., where the breakthroughs in neurodegenerative diseases are made,” Spaulding said.

That might not be possible if UCSF had not turned to a private developer that will construct the building and sign a 30-year, fixed-rate lease with a nonprofit entity that will float public bonds in August or September, Spaulding said.

Only a few years earlier, UCSF was faced with rising construction costs, researchers searching for off-campus space and an evaporating pool of state cash.

“It will be maybe 20 percent cheaper than our other buildings,” Spaulding said about the building, citing the cost of the UC system amortizing debt as well as the ability to funnel tax-exempt construction financing to the developer that is cheaper than commercial paper.

The cost for the university to develop a typical sophisticated lab building is $1,400 to $1,500 per square foot.

Based on those costs and the projected 20 percent savings, the building could cost more than $250 million, but Spaulding said the total cost is still uncertain.

McCarthy Cook, one of the developers of the China Basin building where UCSF has some 300,000 square feet of space, won a competition that included more than a dozen developers responding to a request for proposals two years ago. The development team also includes Clark Construction Co. and its Edgemore Realty unit.

“It’s an experiment,” Spaulding said.

The rental rate hasn’t been set, because the UC system is in negotiations with the development team. The rate also is dependent on the bond sales.

By comparison, UCSF is paying $39 per square foot in the first year for its orthopedics institute to lease 42,000 square feet from Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. at 1500 Owens St. The institute opens this fall a little more than a block away from the planned neuroscience building.

The neuroscience building would be one of the first projects in the UC system — if not the first — to rely on this type of arrangement. The UC system typically uses a design-bid-build process for development.

UC Berkeley is considering two such projects: a 160,000-square-foot office building on University Avenue with Panattoni Developers of Sacramento and the 150,000-square-foot first phase of its community health campus near Shattuck and Hearst avenues with Lowe Enterprises of Los Angeles.

Both projects, however, are behind the planned 2011 completion date for the UCSF building.

Meanwhile, UCSF launched a $150 million fundraising campaign to pay for programs and new faculty at the neuroscience building. The effort has netted at least $50 million in pledges, including $14 million from a Dublin, Ireland, philanthropist.

The campaign is led by Conway, of Angel Investors LP, who in 2007 led a grassroots $7 million, 60-day campaign to fund research into Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease, a brain-wasting disease at the center of the research of Prusiner’s lab on UCSF’s Parnassus campus.

Conway, who also is vice chair of the UCSF Foundation, got involved in the CJD campaign after his longtime friend and Netscape founder Mike Homer was diagnosed with the disease in May 2007. Homer, 50, died Feb. 1.

“People like Stan Prusiner are excited about expanding facilities into this building,” Spaulding said. “There’s a lot of interest in these areas and a lot of potential.”

rleuty@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4939

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...20/story3.html

[WildCowboy]

Thanks for the articles, BT. The UCSF neuroscience building has been on the table for a long time, and it's nice to see that it looks like it's finally going to be a go. There are concerns that 20% cost savings and third-party developer will result in cut corners that make the building not fit with the rest of the campus, but hopefully it'll be fine.

Seems like there's lots of activity going on down there now. I knew that the Pfizer complex was going up , but didn't realize that Block 13 was underway as well.

I understand that the big warehouse at 3rd and Mariposa is coming down later this year to allow prep work for the hospital to begin. Exciting times...would love it if someone could get down there to shoot some pics of the activity. I've been gone almost three months now, and it seems like a fair amount has happened in that time.