SF: Transbay Terminal Plans Promise New Life for Downtown

photo from Transbay Transit Center 

Whether you have a favorite among the three finalists for the new Transbay Terminal or not (I’m partial to the one with 5.4 acre park on its top), one of these three will be chosen to create the tower that may become the new tallest building on the San Francisco Skyline.

But along with that tower comes a plan to revitalize the area in which the tower will go up, and thus revitalize the city as a whole in the process. Not only will the plan extend CalTrain and connect to the futuristic High Speed Rail; in fact, the largely ignored 40 acres spanning Mission, Main, 1st, 2nd and Folsom Streets will, in the words of the Transbay Center’s webpage, will now offer a new community:

Adopted by the City of San Francisco in June 2005, the Redevelopment Plan will facilitate the development of nearly 3,400 new homes (35% of which will be affordable), 1.2 million square feet of new office, hotel, and commercial space and 60,000 square feet of retail, not including retail in the Transit Center. The buildings will include townhouses, low- and mid-rise buildings, and slender high-rise towers spaced apart to provide sunlight to proposed new plazas, parks, and widened sidewalks.

…..Folsom Street will be the centerpiece of this new neighborhood and will feature widened sidewalks with cafes, markets and views of the San Francisco Bay.

For those of us concerned that all new housing is just like old housing (i.e. too expensive), we can take relief from the content of BeyondChron’s article, which seems optimistic that San Francisco Supervisors are aggressively enforcing affordable housing codes:

According to state laws governing the plan, 25% of units must be affordable to 60% or less of Area Median Income (AMI) and 10% must be affordable to 120% or less of AMI, making a total of 1200, or 35%, of the project’s 3400 units affordable. About 400 of those units will be included in market rate developments and the remaining 800 will be in stand-alone, all-affordable buildings in the project area and will be slated for “very-low income” tenants. The RDA [Redevelopment Agency] project will be funded largely by taxes on the sale of (mostly state owned) land, 20% of which will go to fund the affordable housing initiatives.

Supervisor Sandoval bluntly asked the RDA why the plan didn’t cut the affordability for for-sale units to 100% and asked how the RDA planned to market those units to those who would need them. Morales reminded him that the units built on city administered portion of the would be priced at 100% of AMI and said that the rest could be negotiated down on a project-by-project basis. Supervisor Maxwell asked why the portion of the tax increment for affordable housing was only 20% when she had thought that RDA policy aimed for 50% and also asked what the RDA was doing to create jobs in the area. Morales said that the RDA predicted that the 20% would satisfy the housing provisions of the plan and said that there is a “strong agency policy and history for job growth.”

Thus the exact number of affordable units and the manner in which the project will proceed is still to be determined. But whether this proposed construction, slated to begin in 2008, is in your part of the city or not, you might want to add your two cents to the debate about what amounts to one of the largest construction projects San Franciscans have seen in their lifetime. Inspired? Here are some ways to get involved now:

1. The Transbay Center accepts comments on its site 

2. The Transbay Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) usually meets on the second Thursday of every month at 5:30 p.m. at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street, 2nd Floor Conference Room.

3. You can keep informed about the CAC’s activities by sending an email here: cac@transbaycenter.org