Construction Watch: New Library Making Progress in North Beach

Thursday, June 6, 2013, by Michael Conrad

Looking like a giant erector set, the new North Beach Branch Library is moving right along after surviving multiple attempts to thwart construction. The 2-level, 8,500 sq. ft. building, 60 percent larger than the current one, will feature plenty of glass to allow an abundance of natural light. Located on a triangular lot at the corner of Columbus and Lombard streets, the new library will replace the small, aging library next door when completed. The old library, as well as the adjacent block of Mason Street, will be removed, allowing for expansion of the nearby Joe DiMaggio Playground.
·North Beach Library Coverage [Curbed SF]
·North Beach New Construction [San Francisco Public Library]

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PM Linkage: Microhood Watch; Bernal Parking Wars; Berkeley Weirdness; More!

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Recession Watch: November 2012

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Recession Watch: November 2012

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Development Watch: Seawall Lot To Stay a Parking Lot (For Now)

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, March 13, 2012, by Alex Bevk

Seawall Lot 337 - current parking lot for AT&T Park and future home to...something - will remain a parking lot for the next five years, if a renewal lease is approved by the Board of Supervisors this afternoon. The space is currently leased to China Basin Ballpark Company, LLC, and they use the lot for commuter, baseball game, and special event parking. While all the hullabaloo over the site's future development continues to simmer (apartments and retail? artist space? Warriors stadium? oh my!), Port staff and CBBC have quietly negotiated terms for a five-year interim lease for special events and parking. It's not all for the sake of biding time though - the lease includes a high-season (ie. baseball season) base rent from April through October of $355,000 per month. Jeez, and we thought our rent was out of the park.
· Lease for Real Property - China Basin Ballpark Company, LLC - Seawall Lot 337 [SF Gov]
· Mission Rock Plan Approved, Now More Open About Warriors Arena [Curbed SF]
· Previous coverage of Seawall Lot 337 [Curbed SF]

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AM Linkage: Watch Out For the Whales; Love For the Dolores Park Rehab; New Mural In Hayes Valley; More!

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Development Watch: "Sister" Project to Infinity Towers Back Before Planning Commission

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, February 8, 2012, by Alex Bevk

[Super old rendering of 201 Folsom, seen here with Infinity design pre-Arquitectonica intervention, via SF New Developments]

Tomorrow the Planning Commission will hear an informational presentation on the "sister" project to the Infinity Towers. Approved back in 2003, the project is for two residential towers, 350 and 400 feet above an 80-foot podium, at 201 Folsom Street across the street from the Infinity I & II. The original approval motion recognized the potential for design of the project to change before construction and included a condition of approval that the Planning Director approve the final design after an informational hearing at the Planning Commission. The new design reduces the number of parking spots in the podium section, originally included for the neighboring US Post Office sorting facility that's now defunct, so the podium has been redesigned. There will be less dwelling units than originally planned, but more commercial spaces and open space. And oh yeah, the project architect is totally new (from Heller Manus to Arquitectonica). The agenda didn't include the new plans, so we'll fill you in after the hearing tomorrow.
· Memo for Informational Hearing on 201 Folsom St [Curbed SF]
· Hope Yet for Rincon Hill's 201 Folsom St [Curbed SF]
· Infinity's Cousin Still Coming, One Day [Curbed SF]
· Past Coverage of The Infinity [Curbed SF Archives]

201 Folsom Street, San Francisco CA

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Development Watch: Metro Theater Wants to Pump You Up

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, February 8, 2012, by Alex Bevk Tomorrow the Planning Commission will hear a Conditional Use Application to seismically retrofit the closed Metro Theater at 2055 Union Street and convert it to a Equinox Gym. The project would divide the existing interior theater auditorium to create three full floor levels of gym space. The existing ground floor retail space in the front, currently occupied by Marmalade, will remain, with a second retail space added on the other side and a community room on the first floor available to neighborhood groups. Additionally, the 2,000 square foot fitness area will be available for the public as a multipurpose auditorium, including a permanent retractable screen, up to 18 times per year. The Metro Theater was declared a City Landmark in 2009, so the project would preserve historic murals within the auditorium by constructing the new floors away from the side walls. · Conditional Use Application for Metro Theater [SF Planning] · Union Street’s Metro Theater: Saving Its Skin In Order To Un-Shutter [SocketSite] · Metro Theater [Cinema Treasures]

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Super Bowl Ad Watch 2012: Here's how the topic of real...

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? Previous: Website of the Day: Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table

? Next: Le Corbusier Meets Ikea in Portugal; Jon Corzine Lists

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Development Watch: East Bay: Joy in Richmond as New Lab Location Announced

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, January 24, 2012, by Philip Ferrato

[Image, courtesy the City of Richmond via SFist]

UC Berkeley has an 80-year history of collaboration with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and yesterday morning they announced that UC will consolidate their bio-sciences programs on a university-owned bayfront site known as the Richmond Field Station. They'll begin to draft environmental impact reports, and since the lab is a program of the U.S. Department of Energy, start looking for approval from Washington. And while the site is in RIchmond, one of the Bay Area's most troubled communities, the 100-acre site is separated from most of the population by the I-80 freeway. Of course, "jobs" were mentioned, and Berkeleyside has more details on the RIchmond perspective. No word on relocating the other UC programs currently on the site- there are sculpture studios and engineering programs, among others- or the non-U commercial tenants like the EPA and Schlumberger. Also no word on when construction is expected to begin, but the new facility is certain to put Richmond on the global science map.
· Berkeley Lab [US Dept of Energy]
· Lab Choice May Be Beneficial to Berkeley in the Long Run [Berkeleyside]

1301 S. 46th St., Richmond, California

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Market Watch: Time magazine coverboy Warren Buffett on...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, January 23, 2012, by Sarah Firshein

Time magazine coverboy Warren Buffett on the housing industry: "Once we get back to a million housing starts per year, I think pundits will be surprised just how fast unemployment will come down in this country,” he says. “There are 4 million people hitting age 22 every year in this country. Sure, you can double up on households for a while, but at some point, hormones kick in, and living with your in-laws loses its allure.” (He's done his part by listing his Calif. manse.) Read the full profile here. [Time via Zillow Blog; previously]

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? Next: The Awesome Ski House of Jon Huntsman's Billionaire Father

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Alex Ovechkin Watch: NHL star Alex Ovechkin has plunked...

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Development Watch: The Embarcadero: Tennis Gone AWOL in 8 Washington Street's New Look

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Thursday, December 29, 2011, by Philip Ferrato

San Francisco Waterfront Partners has released a new look for their plans for 8 Washington Street, a contentious bit of real estate on the Embarcadero, and it does not include tennis. The Golden Gateway Club has aligned itself with the developer and will shut down the tennis courts, replacing it with a gym/health club, indoor and outdoor pools, and the flavor of the decade, a green roof. The condo towers don't seem to have changed much, but where once there were walled-off private tennis courts there will now be a public park and playground. Jackson Street will extend to the Embarcadero once again as the Jackson Street Commons, Drumm Street will be reinvented in much the same way along the pool and playground, ending in the triangular park at Broadway. It's a complicated land swap deal- Ports owns Seawall Lot 351, currently a parking lot for their Ferry Building tenants, and the Golden Gateway club property/sliver is leased from the Revelopment Agency- a legacy of a time when people played tennis in the shadow of the Embarcadero, and Jackson Street ran through what was once a produce market.

As re-programmed by Craig Hartman at SOM and landscape architect Peter Walker, the most recent proposal has 165 units of housing planned in the height-staggered towers, which will fund 33 units of offsite BMR housing. All units will get parking spaces, plus 255 public parking spaces (in part to fulfill Ports' lease obligations across the street) and 81 bicycle spaces plus along with food and retail on the Embarcadero. Does the club think there's more money in swimming and spinning classes- the only other gym on this stretch of the Embarcadero is the YMCA. Ports is behind the project, but there is the usual field of NIMBYs arrayed against it. Meanwhile, the folks (folk?) at the opposition, Friends of Golden Gateway (FOGG) ended the year on an upbeat note, going into the holidays thanking their allies and sure of prevailing over the development… and saving the tennis courts.
· 8 Washington Street/Seawall 351 Coverage [Curbed SF]
· 8 Washington Overview [SF Waterfront Partners]
· FOGG Seasons Greetings [FOGG]

[All images via SOM/PWP Landscape Architecture/San Francisco Waterfront Partners]

8 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA

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Video Interlude: Watch a Madcap Video of an Angry Birds Gingerbread House

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Friday, December 30, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

One last gingerbread house—never mind an Angry Birds one—to depart 2011 with bravado? This one's pretty staggering: mad scientist/YouTube user mraakko has used the magic of time-lapse to capture the detailed making of gingerbread house and marzipan birds and pigs. Below, watch.

The Video:

· Ten of History's Most Insanely Awesome Gingerbread Houses [Curbed National]
· Angry Birds - Gingerbread House - Time Lapse [YouTube via Buzz Feed]

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Green Designers & Architects to Watch in 2012

The search for sustainable solutions often yields the most innovative results—and that's what keeps us forever fascinated with green design. From furniture and accessory visionaries to the brightest modern architects, take a look at some of our favorite designers with their green thumbs on the pulse.

DesignBuildBLUFF :
This non-profit organization combines academics and green design by giving their first-year students hands-on experience designing and building homes for families in the Navajo dessert.

Loadingdock5 : This Austrian schooled, Brooklyn-based design duo specializes in innovative, sustainable design solutions. Their modern renovation projects often include, "gentle" upgrades of historic structures with a focus on efficient technologies.

Peter Stathis : From Swatch to Artecnica, this award winning designer has lent his design skills to a wide range of brands to produce high and low-tech products, furniture, lighting and more. His Ikebana Flat-Panel LED Light recently took the prize for Best Lighting at last year's ICFF and we expect his collaborations to only keep getting bigger and better.

SHED : This Seattle-based design firm has been making waves thanks to their motto, "architecture that solves problems." They've made their mark, thanks to projects converting unlikely spaces like garages and barns into chic and modern living spaces.

Legato Studios : We love this design collective thanks to their mind-bending solutions to small space living. This dining table is a multi-purpose piece of transformative furniture that, when folded, serves double duty as a bench with under-storage.

RAAD : With his Yale pedigree and background in cathedral design to his experience as a satellite engineer for NASA, RAAD's principle James Ramsey brings his widely varied design sensibility to this New York-based firm. Their body of work that includes stunning residential and commercial properties, but we can't get enough of their urban chicken coop—perfect for the our citified feathered friends and aspiring rooftop farmers.

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Video Interlude: Watch a Guy Pedal a Bike to Make a Whole House Collapse

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Wednesday, November 30, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Hat tip to the blog Laughing Squid, which has recently featured the work of artist, sculptor, and messer-upper of everyday objects Michael Beitz. Beitz, who has a background in furniture design, has made chairs look like they're growing clouds, sofas look like they've been twisted and tied into a knot, and dining tables look like the St. Louis arch. Below, he makes the bones of a house collapse and rise up again simply by pedaling a bike. "I started to see these objects as expressions of social functions that could be altered to describe certain anxieties or tensions which occur on or around such objects," he's recently said in an interview with Don't Panic. Just watch, it's cool.

The Video:

· michael beitz & matt monroe_folding house with sound [YouTube via Laughing Squid]
· Michael Beitz [Don't Panic]

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Development Watch: High-Speed Rail and Transbay Terminal: Build It Anyway?

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, November 22, 2011, by Philip Ferrato

Transbay Transit Center Demo from steelblue on Vimeo.

With all the Occupy Wherever-Everywhere this past month, we might have missed the Feds eliminating any money next year for high-speed rail and an increasingly bleak outlook for fast trains beyond 2013. And as Matier & Ross point out, there's speculation about the consequences for the glittering Transbay Terminal now under construction. Above, video from more optimistic times. The Transbay Authority says it's still on, but Supervisor Sean Elsbernd thinks:

What we could wind up with is a big basement under the most expensive bus station in the world

There's still a few billion dollars committed to building the first section of high-speed rail through Bakersfield, but as for the entire Anaheim-San Francisco route, the estimates are up and many would-be riders are yet unborn. Undeterred, the draft EIR for the entire project- terminal, tower and elevated park- wends it's way through the EIR process.
· S.F. Transbay Terminal Project Has Murky Future [Matier & Ross/SF Gate]
· Feds Ax High-Speed Funding, Approve Vegas Train Right of Way [Curbed LA]
· California Bullet Trains New Plan: $98.5B, LA to SF in 2033 [Curbed LA]
· Transbay Terminal Draft EIR Dramarama [Curbed SF]

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Video Interlude: Watch a Modest 450-Sq-Ft Studio Unfold Into Four Rooms

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, November 14, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Sustainable-design site Fair Companies—they who brought you the 16-year-old who built a 130-square-foot house and the 78-square-foot apartment—is at it again, this time with a 450-square-foot Manhattan studio that was worked up by Normal Projects architects Michael Chen and Kari Andersen, who turned a basic white box into an unfolding, origami-like creation. The duo constructed a blue multi-purpose closet that seemingly eats space but instead affords it, serving as a bedrooms, office, closet, entertaining area, and more. "I spent my first year out of college reaching in Japan, so I think Japanese sensibilities influenced my sense of space a little bit," explains Eric Schneider, the third-grade teacher who lives here. "This kind of works, this compact way—this is very comfortable for me." In total, Schneider spent $70K on renovating the apartment (including an overhaul of the bathroom and kitchen). "How do you get more out of something smaller without having to make big sacrifices?" he muses. "You'd hope that something like this enhances someone's life—that it doesn't just make things less better." Watch the full video tour below.

The Video:

· Tiny origami apartment in Manhattan unfolds into 4 rooms [Fair Companies]

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Video Interlude: Watch a Truly Masterful Halloween-Decorating Light Show

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Monday, October 24, 2011, by Sarah Firshein

Riverside, Calif.-based YouTuber Halloween Light Show has rigged an otherwise unassuming house with a complex lighting system so that it's synched up to the song This is Halloween from the 1993 flick The Nightmare Before Christmas. According to the project description, the dazzling display was made possible thanks to strobes, floods, thousands of LED lights, and DMX fixtures and dimmers. Whatever that means. Sit back and watch as four pumpkin faces sing and tombstones do their thing, all without a an electricity-bill care in the world.

Halloween Light Show: This is Halloween:

· Halloween Light Show - This is Halloween [YouTube via Laughing Squid]

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Construction Watch: Attention, high-end bowling lovers: construction of...

× Like us and you'll find top breaking news in your Facebook newsfeed. Sign up for our daily email newsletter and get top stories and breaking news delivered to your inbox. Tuesday, October 25, 2011, by Sally Kuchar

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