The diagram showing the evolution of the plan, using different zoning rules, is interesting. You can't just start with the tower you want to build, you have to start with an ugly lump, then mold it into the desired result.
How exactly are they planning to go from step 1 ("additional density") to step 2 ("reformation") ? It looks like they would have to demolish about 10 floors' worth of housing and rebuild it in the center of the lot. That can't be done overnight, and all those people whose housing you have to demolish would have to go somewhere.
I had the some question, but then realized I was misunderstanding the diagram. Replace the word "step" with "iteration" and it makes more sense. This is showing how the design evolved with additional constraints.
This will never get built. If anything it is a "hi" proposal with the hopes that "med" will make it through the process.
If the final project exceeds five stories ("lo") I will be very surprised.
Locals will fight tooth an nail to limit any and all construction.
They freaked THE FUCK out when someone proposed a 7-story apartment unit back in 2021, comparing councilman Gordon Mar to the "the leader of the Chinese communist party" for supporting affordable housing (then he lost his election to someone with no meaningful positions on affordable housing).
Do you really think that residents who went ballistic on 7 stories won't go full-on nuclear winter on 50?
Residents don't care that they're screwing their children, they don't care about homelessness (beyond punishing them for existing), and they certainly don't care about "the nature and character of our neighborhood"-- they only care about "number gets bigger" when they look at the Zillow page for their address.
Genuine question. Even if it could be built, is there a real market for a skyscraper that's mostly housing in that area of town? The Bay Area is a bit atypical but the "housing shortage" in a lot of places is mostly a shortage in the specific places where people prefer to live.
Yeah, there’s a market. The units would likely be nicer than the old houses people currently rent there for a lot money. Increased supply may make them cheaper too.
Sunset is pretty nice, especially now that most work remote and the downtown soma area is not a great place to be.
I’m in dogpatch because it’s one of the few neighborhoods that has a lot of condos that isn’t downtown soma.
Dogpatch is well situated for commuting, as is a fair amount of SOMA.
The SFBOS is looking to change that because they want to take down the 280 connector that gets people in and out of SF quickly.
WFH is slowly going away so I wouldn't keep counting on that either.
The Dogpatch condos I'm familiar with though are pretty much midrise which are a lot different from living in a skyscraper though. And are pretty convenient to existing public transit and getting to FiDi/SoMa even if you don't want to live there.
Not currently, but the city is running the L Taraval muni improvement project concurrent with this development, and that line has a stop right next to the lot. That should give trains traffic priority and consolidate stops, reducing travel time to downtown. The reason people don't want to live in the Sunset is that it takes an hour to get to SoMa/downtown where the businesses are. You can get from the South Bay to SoMa faster than getting from the Sunset there.
If they fix the transit issues the Sunset could become a very desirable place to live - you have easy access to the beach, good restaurants, less crime, lots of parks, and generally higher quality of life than the eastern part of SF.
The irony is they don't realize the land their house is on is worth a lot more if the person they sell it to in future was allowed to build a skyscraper on it
Yeah that’s what local review has been doing for years, hence this counter offer; not to mention the state stripping zoning rights from municipalities. There originally was a serious offer on the table, yet it wasn’t entertained either.
Terraces can be nice but I don't think the presence or absence or terraces can correlated with community. I've lived in both apartment complexes and single family neighborhoods and I've known more neighbors when I lived in a complex.
I'm not an architect in the slightest. But I've traveled and the modern US building look dull, sterile and hostile compared to what I see in Asia and Europe.
If you're going to put in that kind of time and money, try to make something that 50 years from now will be thought of as a culture heritage site
I'm guessing the renders are not representative of what it will actually look like as the article states that "their initial filing does not provide us with much detail about exterior design". It also seems unlikely that this exact proposal will be approved and constructed as-is.
Spoken like someone who hasn't had a monstrously out of place building developed beside their home, or an inappropriate use-case like high density commercial.
I can assure you, people complaining about the shape/size of skyscrapers in their neighbourhoods did not lead us to a SF housing crisis.
I think this sentiment can be rejected by a fairly simple reductio proof.
To wit:
Any building taller than the tallest building currently in the area is illegitimate because it is "out of character."
Therefore, the tallest existing building was illegitimate on those same grounds.
Therefore, the building that was tallest before the tallest currently-existing building was also illegitimate.
...
Therefore the first building ever to be constructed in San Francisco was obviously illegitimate since it would have been the most out of character with the previous millions of years of no development.
Therefore all development is illegitimate.
Since this is absurd, the proposition should be rejected.
There is a formal definition of "skyscraper", which comprises a steel frame supporting curtain walls. Buildings below 100 feet never qualify in practice. Since half of San Francisco has zoning heights below 50 feet and even more onerous unit limits, it's safe to say that the housing supply could be radically expanded without any skyscrapers.
For a general criterion, I think that double the local median building height would be a good line, though at least 3 stories should always be allowed anywhere with affordability issues.
Only works if you go full libertarian and whoever builds the building also builds their own roads and schools and other services. I hate to admit it but zoning exists for a reason.
The larger your building, the higher your responsibility to your community. A building doesn't only sit on your lot, you're also inflicting it on your neighbors.
Anyway, large apartment building is fine, but if you make it big, then make sure it doesn't look like dreck.
Real impact would be something more of a city-plan such as "High density mid-rises along a corridor such as: California, Geary, Sunset or even Sloat (but Sloat is hinterlandish) and build an underground Muni (or Bart arm) to support the population's transit needs.
I've lived in SF for years as a residential property owner, in the Bay Area for over a decade, and I say bring on the development. Views on this issue are not as one-sided as you think.
(Also, the idea that you need to have lived here for some arbitrary tenure to vote on issues is gross.)
It's not wrong, but making it a requirement for one's opinion to be taken seriously is pretty gross. For one, it actively favors people with money, since they are the only ones who can afford to establish new multi-generation bonafides. Also, lest we forget, this city's not too distant past includes long periods of redlining and the displacement of Japanese American residents from the homes.
In other words, it's nice that your family was able to make it work here, and I genuinely think that it is an important perspective to consider, but maybe keep in mind that just because others weren't / aren't as fortunate doesn't mean they shouldn't have an equal claim to shaping the city's future.
For one, 70-40 years ago is 2 to 4 generations, so I do think it's still relevant to think about. Also that history shaped what SF became, so new people wanting make changes doesn't seem unreasonable.
For another, the fact that some people are able to make it work doesn't change the fact that the policies you and your friends advocate for actively make it harder for people to "stick it out." Which is a convenient way to limit who gets a say in what this city becomes.
Heh, seriously though, FWIW, as someone who grew up here and was, until recently, against what I called at the time the Manhattan-ization of San Francisco, the argument that did the most to change my mind about growth was a quick review of the history of the place: In a nutshell: Ohlone, Spanish, 49ers, ..., Beatniks, Hippies, ..., Tech Bros.
In other words, locals getting displaced by incoming waves of invaders is more-or-less the history of San Francisco, from founding to the present day.
That, combined with the simple fact that I'll never realistically be able to afford to buy a home in my home town (despite having a decent career programming computers), convinced me that we should try to build ridiculous amounts of housing here. Like enough to put a serious dent in the housing shortage on a national scale, eh? Let's build hundreds of thousands of new units! I don't know how the logistics would work out, but I bet we could figure it out.
The history is mostly irrelevant to building here, and you forgot the Yuppies then the Wuppies :)
I should also point out that 20 year high interest rates are bringing down the prices of homes so you may be able to buy one here shortly.
Yes, we are probably 50-60k units behind where we should be, but that doesn't mean we should build them without intelligence. Building along underground transit lines should be the primary goal because thats where its the most sustainable AND where its most likely to fix our urban blight brought on by the last 3 years of "stuff".
The city's budget does need new taxpayers but putting folks all the way out by the ocean is truly a bad idea and a way to create pain.
> The history is mostly irrelevant to building here
It's relevant to getting the current residents to recognize that they're not the ultimate endpoint to the history of the San Francisco peninsula, eh? At least, that's what it did for me. :)
> you forgot the Yuppies then the Wuppies :)
It's true. That '...' between the 49ers and the Beatniks elided a lot too, eh?
> Yes, we are probably 50-60k units behind where we should be, but that doesn't mean we should build them without intelligence. Building along underground transit lines should be the primary goal because thats where its the most sustainable AND where its most likely to fix our urban blight brought on by the last 3 years of "stuff".
> The city's budget does need new taxpayers but putting folks all the way out by the ocean is truly a bad idea and a way to create pain.
Exactly.
They should take their YIMBYism somewhere else.
Maybe like Oakland. Oakland is permitting more buildings than SF but the problem is that Oakland has a huge crime and governance issue, even worse than SF.
I'm very pro development in general, but I'm not sure if the market for a building of that type makes sense for that location? Over 40 minutes to FiDi on public transit and not especially close to 280, so not super convenient for commuters. That far out there also isn't a ton of bars/restaurants, so no especially attractive to younger people. And for families lack of dedicated outdoor space + downstairs neighbors to worry about makes it less than ideal.
I hate that SF has painted itself into a corner, where development has to occur in whatever random locations that happen to open up. I think for higher density housing, locations off of muni closer to the core of the city would obviously make more sense / have a clear market, but we just can't get there.
From what I've seen this kind of building grows it's own ecosystem of supporting shops, restaurants, and services. Ideally in the building itself but it usually spills over into the area as well.
A lot of attitudes like this become a catch 22 where we can't build dense in an area because it's not ready, but it's not ready because the density is low. Even pro housing folks fall into this trap pretty regularly.
Clearly, the developer thinks it will make financial sense to build it that way. If it turns out nobody wants it, then all the better, the market forces will drive down the price and make it affordable housing. The only one that loses in this case is the developer. Succeed or fail, it will be a plus for people who want to buy in a housing starved area.
It's an easy drive south on the 101 to get to the rest of silicon valley, without the horrible traffic/congestion of downtown SF.
Also, unlike many neighborhoods in SF, there is superb muni access and also great proximity to golden gate park AND ocean beach. What better outdoors space could you want?
I lived in the outer sunset for a few years and it was among the most livable of the neighborhoods in SF that I frequented.
"the 101" outs you as someone who's only briefly been here, and also you have to take 280 to even get to 101 so it doesn't seem like you drove much either.
>It's an easy drive south on the 101 to get to the rest of silicon valley, without the horrible traffic/congestion of downtown SF.
That sound is everyone who actually lived in SF laughing at you.
Anyone who claims that going by car from the Outer Sunset to 101 is an "easy drive ... without the horrible traffic/congestion of downtown SF" is a liar or a fool.
Not to mention that this building won’t have that much parking availability. Only a small portion of residents will be able to own a car, the rest will be dependent on the Muni.
Brand new ocean-view apartments 2 blocks from the beach? They're definitely marketable. People don't travel to work as much these days anyway. While it's true that closer to town will be more attractive, but that's not this project.
What is the climate footprint of a tower like this. I was under the impression that skyscrapers didn’t have that positive of an impact even when accounting for the positives of more dense living. Isn’t there an optimum around 5-8 stories, higher than that you’ll start seeing diminishing returns, and after like 20 stories, than the impact starts getting more and more negative?
I’m not an architect nor a civil engineer so perhaps I’ve got this completely wrong, but I think it has something to do with both the amount of concrete required, which has a huge climate footprint, as well as the logistics around pluming, cooling, heating, vertical escalation, emergency response, etc. become increasingly difficult as you add more stories. At some point these difficulties add up to make it worse than a 5-8 story mid-rise.
Just noting that the space is currently a plant nursery, used to go there a lot when I lived in the area. If this gets developed, they are going to need to figure out much better public transit since it is in the middle of nowhere SF. There is a train line that goes through there, but it is slow AF cause it has so many stops.
Yes, let's build the tallest building on sand about 10' above sea level a couple blocks from the sea, in an era of climate change.
Yes, 212 parking spots for 996 people/bedrooms in 722 units will cause no parking problems.
Yes, let's do a the largest mega-project of a large and historic residential area next to the shared resources of the ocean and zoo, based on findings from a tiny recently incorporated design company from Nevada run by a few entrepreneurs.
Actually, there's one benefit: they are right next to the sewage plant.
> Yes, 212 parking spots for 996 people/bedrooms in 722 units will cause no parking problems.
Hey, "additional parking will be included for 327 bicycles." I guess the remaining 183 units are for walkers only.
People who like stuff like this also seem to irrationally hate cars. But even if you despise cars, it seems like a terrible idea to build residential building without at least once parking space per unit. Doing otherwise is just going to create externalities.
Its no secret that SFYIMBY and the SF Bicycle Coalition walk in the same circles; Vastly homogenous. More and more San Franciscans are figuring out how cancerous SFBC is and it'll probably be another year or two before YIMBY is an actual dirty word.
> To sum it up, YIMBYs started with a self-serving agenda: to force the production of more luxury housing that they could live in — no matter the consequences to working-class communities. To further their agenda, YIMBYs co-op housing justice messaging, but they’re not housing justice activists. In fact, they have a long, disturbing history of clashing with the housing justice movement. YIMBYs push pro-gentrification, trickle-down housing policies that generate obscene profits for Big Real Estate — and they’ve continually ignored the negative impacts of their policies on working-class residents. YIMBYs are not going away if politicians continue to support them. YIMBYs, put simply, are bad news.
While the organization that runs that website is cancerous, the article isn't entirely wrong.
I don't believe that people who're pro-development are terrible but YIMBY seems to be a "develop at any cost" idea which is really not great. The people who're most rabid about it do tend to be the folks who coopt social justice messaging for causes like this, they exist everywhere.
I should say I do know some people who are YIMBY and are also very good people.
Come on, look at the bright side of things: this project is going to piss off a lot of San Franciscans, exactly the kind that proved, during COVID, that their real values are the exact opposite of the ones they claim to be in favor of.
They should amend this project and add 15 more stories!
Thats a reasonable point - this will open the eyes of San Franciscans to why people like Scott Wiener, Dean Preston and Matt Haney/etc are bad for SF.
It might be a way to break the political logjam of the far left/fauxgressive movement thats paralized this city and wrecked its economy.
Such a shakeup is long overdue. Also imagine the westerly views of the west coast sunset and foggy mornings from the skyscraper, or the northerly view of the golden gate and bay, or the easterly view of the city spread out before you. Wow.
So 712 apartments, 212-car basement garage, and “additional parking will be included for 327 bicycles”.
Even right out of college, I would not have purchased or rented a place in SF above ground level with no back yard, no car parking, no bike parking, and no good access to transit. Good luck to the developers, but I think this is a mistake.
If they increased it to, say, 1000 bikes worth of parking, maybe.
A 712-unit building can afford real security. This is solvable, even if it takes some time, and the developer and the HoA have a strong incentive to solve it.
Its not solved now in larger buildings in SF.
As long as addiction and bicycle theft remains unchecked, having "bike parking" is not viable.
Also, Biking to downtown from that area is probably unfeasable for most people. I've been biking here my whole life and even though I live midway on that commute I would never want to do it. I only know ONE single person who ever did it, and he basically did it to make the spandex biker crowd look weak. San Francisco is not and will never be a city that bikers do well in.
I find this conversation hilarious, because I have the "unique" experience of getting locked out of my SF building in the middle of the night, because a drug addict LITERALLY CUT THE STEEL GATE OPEN, and my neighbor "fixed" the problem with a bike lock.
That said, SOMA is a bit different than outer sunset. But still, folks who underestimate the resourcefulness of a drug addict are underestimating the power of nature itself.
Preston and Haney have ushered in the tenderloinization of the rest of the city. Outer Sunset now has encampments and fenty folders, if we don't do something to reign in the DSA we're going to be needing a lot more than bike locks.
> Even right out of college, I would not have purchased or rented a place in SF above ground level with no back yard, no car parking, no bike parking, and no good access to transit.
Eh, ultimately doesn't seem like an issue to worry about. I'm pretty sure given the right price, there are plenty of people more than happy to overlook these inconveniences. If the developers think it makes financial sense to build as is, who are we to stop them ;-)
People can adapt to all kinds of limitations as the need develops. Pretty sure if the demand for bike parking goes up, there will be people lining up to convert their car parking into bike parking for the right price. Same with public transit, if you really had 700+ voting households that are starting to demand public transportation, I would think the demand would be addressed in a reasonable timeframe.
I should also point out that the newly built building across the way from this spot has had vacant commercial space since it was completed (24+ months).
This building simply doesn't belong here and the quicker the YIMBY folks understand what is and isn't a bad idea the better.
Make use of the ocean, and the wind. Don't build a building with no good views of the ocean (like that ugly thing[1] opposite the Zoo). Shape it to direct the wind to your wind turbines to generate energy.
Figure out what it's going to do to inland wind patterns.
All of that "land" is sand.
It's faster to get downtown from the East Bay than the Outer Sunset, for both cars and mass transit.
How long until the ocean reaches the building? It's already threatening to destroy the Great Highway.
Can we build a wall of these running North-South from the Zoo to the Golden Gate Park? Then put a roof over the Sunset District? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project ) Back-fill housing into a grid or matrix? Like the "stacks" in that movie, but nice?
We could house all the homeless people in the entire country just by building out the Sunset and Richmond districts. Turn SF into a vast "recycling center" for people? (I know that sounds weird but I haven't come up with a better metaphor yet. "Redemption"? "Rehabilitation"? help me out here?)
To grow enough food and handle the waste we can convert [part of] the Bay into Greenwave-style marine farms. ( https://www.greenwave.org/ )
[1] "The Westerly" @ 3535 Wawona St, San Francisco, CA 94116 https://goo.gl/maps/rREGHXWGy8zCAM7G7 I'm generally a fan of brutalist architecture but I hate this, it looks hideous to me. I don't like the way it ignores the ocean.
So in an area of quite cute two floor houses they wanna build that? It looks terrible and destroys the neighbourhood.
I don't live in SF and have no stake in this what so ever. But there seems to be some smug self-righteousness in wrecking other peoples backyards to house tech yuppies and maybe some token homeless people for flavour.
Also, developments like this will raise property values for the local home owners not lower them. There is moneywise no rational reason for local homeowners to oppose this. So I don't buy the greed argument.
102 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadIf the final project exceeds five stories ("lo") I will be very surprised.
Locals will fight tooth an nail to limit any and all construction.
They freaked THE FUCK out when someone proposed a 7-story apartment unit back in 2021, comparing councilman Gordon Mar to the "the leader of the Chinese communist party" for supporting affordable housing (then he lost his election to someone with no meaningful positions on affordable housing).
Do you really think that residents who went ballistic on 7 stories won't go full-on nuclear winter on 50?
Residents don't care that they're screwing their children, they don't care about homelessness (beyond punishing them for existing), and they certainly don't care about "the nature and character of our neighborhood"-- they only care about "number gets bigger" when they look at the Zillow page for their address.
Homelessness in SF is about drugs, not housing, its very clear.
And even if there was it'd be hamstrung by the lack of infrastructure (roads/parking) so it'd be a nightmare to live there.
Sunset is pretty nice, especially now that most work remote and the downtown soma area is not a great place to be.
I’m in dogpatch because it’s one of the few neighborhoods that has a lot of condos that isn’t downtown soma.
WFH is slowly going away so I wouldn't keep counting on that either.
If they fix the transit issues the Sunset could become a very desirable place to live - you have easy access to the beach, good restaurants, less crime, lots of parks, and generally higher quality of life than the eastern part of SF.
Also look at the cost overruns for extending the underground trains, its massively inept at construction.
Will it rent for 10% more or 10% less than something comparable in inner sunset? That's the question.
One is obvious to anyone who looks at it. I'm pro-growth, but this is a farce. It will backfire.
It'd be great if it had a bit more character. Terraces, maybe a public skywalk.
These modern buildings are hostile to communities. They look like fortresses.
After we shape a building like that how will it shape us?
If you're going to put in that kind of time and money, try to make something that 50 years from now will be thought of as a culture heritage site
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massing
Don't own it? You shouldn't get a say. Imposing restrictions on other people's property led us to today's housing crisis.
I can assure you, people complaining about the shape/size of skyscrapers in their neighbourhoods did not lead us to a SF housing crisis.
Vacancy is at an all time high right now, people are leaving my hometown because of our horrendous government.
To wit:
Any building taller than the tallest building currently in the area is illegitimate because it is "out of character."
Therefore, the tallest existing building was illegitimate on those same grounds.
Therefore, the building that was tallest before the tallest currently-existing building was also illegitimate.
...
Therefore the first building ever to be constructed in San Francisco was obviously illegitimate since it would have been the most out of character with the previous millions of years of no development.
Therefore all development is illegitimate.
Since this is absurd, the proposition should be rejected.
QED.
For a general criterion, I think that double the local median building height would be a good line, though at least 3 stories should always be allowed anywhere with affordability issues.
there's many places with restrictions that have no such problems and many places with problems that have no such restrictions.
The correlation between those two things is in actual material, real world, non theoretical but real, reality is effectively zero
That's such an unattractive sentiment, blergh!
The larger your building, the higher your responsibility to your community. A building doesn't only sit on your lot, you're also inflicting it on your neighbors.
Anyway, large apartment building is fine, but if you make it big, then make sure it doesn't look like dreck.
A great start.
Real impact would be something more of a city-plan such as "High density mid-rises along a corridor such as: California, Geary, Sunset or even Sloat (but Sloat is hinterlandish) and build an underground Muni (or Bart arm) to support the population's transit needs.
I say this as a native San Franciscan.
YIMBYism is very misguided in SF.
(Also, the idea that you need to have lived here for some arbitrary tenure to vote on issues is gross.)
In other words, it's nice that your family was able to make it work here, and I genuinely think that it is an important perspective to consider, but maybe keep in mind that just because others weren't / aren't as fortunate doesn't mean they shouldn't have an equal claim to shaping the city's future.
All of those past issues are gone as of 70-40 years ago, harping about them is orthogonal.
I know plenty of people who're poor who've managed to stick it out as well, or they left for greener pastures and are happy with those choices.
And as I've said elsewhere - building is fine, but this building is ridiculous.
For another, the fact that some people are able to make it work doesn't change the fact that the policies you and your friends advocate for actively make it harder for people to "stick it out." Which is a convenient way to limit who gets a say in what this city becomes.
- - - -
Heh, seriously though, FWIW, as someone who grew up here and was, until recently, against what I called at the time the Manhattan-ization of San Francisco, the argument that did the most to change my mind about growth was a quick review of the history of the place: In a nutshell: Ohlone, Spanish, 49ers, ..., Beatniks, Hippies, ..., Tech Bros.
In other words, locals getting displaced by incoming waves of invaders is more-or-less the history of San Francisco, from founding to the present day.
That, combined with the simple fact that I'll never realistically be able to afford to buy a home in my home town (despite having a decent career programming computers), convinced me that we should try to build ridiculous amounts of housing here. Like enough to put a serious dent in the housing shortage on a national scale, eh? Let's build hundreds of thousands of new units! I don't know how the logistics would work out, but I bet we could figure it out.
I should also point out that 20 year high interest rates are bringing down the prices of homes so you may be able to buy one here shortly.
Yes, we are probably 50-60k units behind where we should be, but that doesn't mean we should build them without intelligence. Building along underground transit lines should be the primary goal because thats where its the most sustainable AND where its most likely to fix our urban blight brought on by the last 3 years of "stuff".
The city's budget does need new taxpayers but putting folks all the way out by the ocean is truly a bad idea and a way to create pain.
It's relevant to getting the current residents to recognize that they're not the ultimate endpoint to the history of the San Francisco peninsula, eh? At least, that's what it did for me. :)
> you forgot the Yuppies then the Wuppies :)
It's true. That '...' between the 49ers and the Beatniks elided a lot too, eh?
> Yes, we are probably 50-60k units behind where we should be, but that doesn't mean we should build them without intelligence. Building along underground transit lines should be the primary goal because thats where its the most sustainable AND where its most likely to fix our urban blight brought on by the last 3 years of "stuff".
> The city's budget does need new taxpayers but putting folks all the way out by the ocean is truly a bad idea and a way to create pain.
I agree with you. Well said! Cheers
Understanding something is not the same as liking or agreeing with it.
I hate that SF has painted itself into a corner, where development has to occur in whatever random locations that happen to open up. I think for higher density housing, locations off of muni closer to the core of the city would obviously make more sense / have a clear market, but we just can't get there.
A lot of attitudes like this become a catch 22 where we can't build dense in an area because it's not ready, but it's not ready because the density is low. Even pro housing folks fall into this trap pretty regularly.
Clearly, the developer thinks it will make financial sense to build it that way. If it turns out nobody wants it, then all the better, the market forces will drive down the price and make it affordable housing. The only one that loses in this case is the developer. Succeed or fail, it will be a plus for people who want to buy in a housing starved area.
It's an easy drive south on the 101 to get to the rest of silicon valley, without the horrible traffic/congestion of downtown SF.
Also, unlike many neighborhoods in SF, there is superb muni access and also great proximity to golden gate park AND ocean beach. What better outdoors space could you want?
I lived in the outer sunset for a few years and it was among the most livable of the neighborhoods in SF that I frequented.
MUNI in the sunset is pretty awful as well
>It's an easy drive south on the 101 to get to the rest of silicon valley, without the horrible traffic/congestion of downtown SF.
That sound is everyone who actually lived in SF laughing at you.
Anyone who claims that going by car from the Outer Sunset to 101 is an "easy drive ... without the horrible traffic/congestion of downtown SF" is a liar or a fool.
The immigrants also use underground cheaper taxi services that ferry workers to and from these locations.
Yes, 212 parking spots for 996 people/bedrooms in 722 units will cause no parking problems.
Yes, let's do a the largest mega-project of a large and historic residential area next to the shared resources of the ocean and zoo, based on findings from a tiny recently incorporated design company from Nevada run by a few entrepreneurs.
Actually, there's one benefit: they are right next to the sewage plant.
Although the sewage plant is not exactly right next to it lol.
Or, to put it differently, it could be car friendly when there were less people living and working there.
Hey, "additional parking will be included for 327 bicycles." I guess the remaining 183 units are for walkers only.
People who like stuff like this also seem to irrationally hate cars. But even if you despise cars, it seems like a terrible idea to build residential building without at least once parking space per unit. Doing otherwise is just going to create externalities.
Its no secret that SFYIMBY and the SF Bicycle Coalition walk in the same circles; Vastly homogenous. More and more San Franciscans are figuring out how cancerous SFBC is and it'll probably be another year or two before YIMBY is an actual dirty word.
Hmm. I was curious and decided to google that, and found this:
https://www.housingisahumanright.org/what-is-a-yimby-hint-it...:
> To sum it up, YIMBYs started with a self-serving agenda: to force the production of more luxury housing that they could live in — no matter the consequences to working-class communities. To further their agenda, YIMBYs co-op housing justice messaging, but they’re not housing justice activists. In fact, they have a long, disturbing history of clashing with the housing justice movement. YIMBYs push pro-gentrification, trickle-down housing policies that generate obscene profits for Big Real Estate — and they’ve continually ignored the negative impacts of their policies on working-class residents. YIMBYs are not going away if politicians continue to support them. YIMBYs, put simply, are bad news.
I don't believe that people who're pro-development are terrible but YIMBY seems to be a "develop at any cost" idea which is really not great. The people who're most rabid about it do tend to be the folks who coopt social justice messaging for causes like this, they exist everywhere.
I should say I do know some people who are YIMBY and are also very good people.
What we really need is MIMBY heh.
Even right out of college, I would not have purchased or rented a place in SF above ground level with no back yard, no car parking, no bike parking, and no good access to transit. Good luck to the developers, but I think this is a mistake.
If they increased it to, say, 1000 bikes worth of parking, maybe.
It’s the bikes parked outside that will disappear fast.
Also, Biking to downtown from that area is probably unfeasable for most people. I've been biking here my whole life and even though I live midway on that commute I would never want to do it. I only know ONE single person who ever did it, and he basically did it to make the spandex biker crowd look weak. San Francisco is not and will never be a city that bikers do well in.
That said, SOMA is a bit different than outer sunset. But still, folks who underestimate the resourcefulness of a drug addict are underestimating the power of nature itself.
Eh, ultimately doesn't seem like an issue to worry about. I'm pretty sure given the right price, there are plenty of people more than happy to overlook these inconveniences. If the developers think it makes financial sense to build as is, who are we to stop them ;-)
People can adapt to all kinds of limitations as the need develops. Pretty sure if the demand for bike parking goes up, there will be people lining up to convert their car parking into bike parking for the right price. Same with public transit, if you really had 700+ voting households that are starting to demand public transportation, I would think the demand would be addressed in a reasonable timeframe.
This building simply doesn't belong here and the quicker the YIMBY folks understand what is and isn't a bad idea the better.
Make use of the ocean, and the wind. Don't build a building with no good views of the ocean (like that ugly thing[1] opposite the Zoo). Shape it to direct the wind to your wind turbines to generate energy.
Figure out what it's going to do to inland wind patterns.
All of that "land" is sand.
It's faster to get downtown from the East Bay than the Outer Sunset, for both cars and mass transit.
How long until the ocean reaches the building? It's already threatening to destroy the Great Highway.
Can we build a wall of these running North-South from the Zoo to the Golden Gate Park? Then put a roof over the Sunset District? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project ) Back-fill housing into a grid or matrix? Like the "stacks" in that movie, but nice?
We could house all the homeless people in the entire country just by building out the Sunset and Richmond districts. Turn SF into a vast "recycling center" for people? (I know that sounds weird but I haven't come up with a better metaphor yet. "Redemption"? "Rehabilitation"? help me out here?)
To grow enough food and handle the waste we can convert [part of] the Bay into Greenwave-style marine farms. ( https://www.greenwave.org/ )
[1] "The Westerly" @ 3535 Wawona St, San Francisco, CA 94116 https://goo.gl/maps/rREGHXWGy8zCAM7G7 I'm generally a fan of brutalist architecture but I hate this, it looks hideous to me. I don't like the way it ignores the ocean.
I don't live in SF and have no stake in this what so ever. But there seems to be some smug self-righteousness in wrecking other peoples backyards to house tech yuppies and maybe some token homeless people for flavour.
Also, developments like this will raise property values for the local home owners not lower them. There is moneywise no rational reason for local homeowners to oppose this. So I don't buy the greed argument.