The Park Terrace released its first batch of units this weekend. Word on the street is that deposits were made on between 5 and 10 of the 110 units, and that pricing is starting at $625,000 for one bedrooms, and $895,000 for two bedrooms. And according to the Sales Center (205 Berry), the building should be ready for occupancy in May 2007.
∙ New Developments: Park Terrace (325 Berry) [SocketSite]
∙ The Park Terrace [325 Berry]
Before putting their deposits down, people should ask the Sales Center about their construction issues, namely how the 3rd floor collapsed and had to be rebuilt, and that’s why it’s now delayed until May ’07. I’m sure they’re not advertising that…
Is this another building likely to be affected by the noise/fumes of idling Caltrain diesel engines?
it really boggles my mind the prices that new developments in this area commands. can buyers and prospective buyers shed some insight on how they think they are getting their moneys worth?
after doing my research i found that mission bay is actually one of the more affordable safe neighborhoods in the city thats close to multiple transport options. yeah, if I had my choice id be on telegraph hill but i have to eat cake like the poor working slob i am and deal with trains and traffic.
The cheap part of Mission Bay (3rd/20th) is closer to Petrero Hill and the projects. The area is kind of rundown. But the area next to ATT park is expensive.
I am not sure why the Mission Bay developers are pricing so high since the values of resales in that area have been dropping.
I think it is a better value go for a resale now rather than new construction.
By the way, the Caltrain Station is going underground at 4th/King in a few years. So no more noise and fume.
Corrections to Mission Bay fan:
1. 3rd/20th is Central Waterfront (real estate term) or Dogpatch (resident term). NOT Mission Bay, which ends around 16th.
2. No part of Mission Bay is “near” the projects, which are on the back (southern) side of POTRERO Hill (note spelling).
3. Caltrain Station is not going underground in a “few years”…funding for an underground extension to the Transbay Terminal downtown is still highly uncertain. If it all comes together it will still be a decade before the project is complete. Electrification of the entire line is also a long term plan that is not fully funded. Both of these projects would help Mission Bay, but don’t hold your breath.
Not only would Caltrain go underground, but I’ve heard they’d run it to the new Transbay Terminal to create SF’s equivalent of Grand Central Station. Pretty exciting. Although I’m not sure of the funding status of these projects. Can anyone confirm?
But agreed that the cost/value proposition in SOMA/Mission Bay doesn’t work now. The market is shaky and there are thousands of new units coming on the market in the next 2-3 years. Best advice is to keep renting and wait it out, I think.
By the way, after a few years of residential leading the pack in Mission Bay, it’s clear that we’re moving more heavily into non-res for the next several years. The first spec office building since the dot com bust will soon (now?) be under construction on the poured foundations of a building started for March First (remember them?) on Terry Francois Boulevard. UCSF continues gangbusters, and spin off life sciences firms are beginning to nibble at Mission Bay space. Soon there will be plenty of new jobs that Mission Bay residents can walk to.
Long term, Mission Bay/South Beach is a great place to live to be 1) close to work downtown or in Mission Bay 2)close to Bridge and freeways 3)right on the water 4) and have some of the better weather in SF.
I agree that condos there will be soft as oversupply works out…it’s a shame places like the Beacon hadn’t stayed apartments. But the only direction for this neighborhood seems to be up.
(And, unlike Marina man or whatever his name is…I’m not shilling for the neighborhood for personal profit….just an interested observer)
Are all the developments in Mission Bay built on contaminated soil? The entire Mission Bay is land filled, where did the contamination come from?
Agreed on the contaminated soil comment.
I’ve always wondered what that channel, canal or slough (or whatever the right term is) was used for years ago? I used to drive by that area to go to the golf driving range(now closed) and remember that area being a polluted mess with homeless encampments and the slough filled with garbage and thick with oil. I know they’ve cleaned it up, but one wonders what’s remaining deep in the water and the surrounding soil??
Anywayz, it just shocks me to see that area now commanding $800-1000 SqFt for what use to be a filthy, contaminated area filled with old machinery, dilapidated boats, abandoned furniture and junk, and who knows what else!
Most of Mission Bay was the Southern Pacific rail yard, which is why it was initially developed by Catellus (once Southern Pacific’s real estate division before being spun off). Because it was a rail yard, it had all the icky stuff associated with rail yards…oils, etc, but as far as I know nothing really terrible (was not a “superfund” site, for instance…) You can be sure that anything built is remediated with all the bad soil hauled away and/or capped. No one will be farming in Mission Bay to be sure, but I don’t think there’s much to worry about.
In answer to what is Mission Creek…it is truly the remnants of Mission Creek, which started in Eureka Valley, went through the Mission and to the Bay. Is technically navigable, which is partly why they went to so much ridiculous expense to save/retrofit the 4th street bridge, which can raise to allow a sailboat, or maybe one of those housebouts, to get out into the bay. The delay in this expensive project is largely why third street light rail is STILL not open.
Mission Creek Has limited purpose these days, but it’s becoming a nice amenity with the new park.
Does anyone know what kind of seismic engineering is used to build high rises on land fill? With all these new Mission Bay residential buildings, UCSF buildings, and the ballpark built on land fill, I can’t imagine they are all vulnerable in the Big One.
Not an engineer, but have heard they drill down through the landfill into the bedrock which is under the original bottom of the bay. Then they pound steel piles into the bedrock and attach the foundations to that. Imagine a lamp on your nightstand. Put the lamp on a big sponge and it’s likely to topple. So you pound a nail through the lamp base, through the sponge, and into the nightstand.
Just adding to Dude’s comment.
I am not sure about 325 Berry. But 235 and 255 Berry Condo (Signature Property) foundations are pile driven 140-150 feet into the ground so that support columns sit on a solid bedrock underneath the bay. The Condo building itself is supported by the matrix of piles.
According to the 235 Berry disclosure package, the “liquidfied” land is estimated to sink at a rate of 12 inches / 50 years. Theoretically, in a few hundred years, these condo will becomes “true waterfront” property as they will sit on top of the piles surrounded by water.
I am joking naturally.
The HOA and government will be periodically refilling and reconstructing the land surrounding the condo.
Re seismic: Time will tell of course, but large buildings built on landfill need to meet stringent building codes and are carefully engineered. They often have deep pilings to underlying bedrock, and their soils are often “engineered” as well through compaction to be a better building material. Many of the highrises downtown are on fill as well, and the ones that were around in 1989 did just fine (and standards are even tougher now).
The difference between new buildings on landfill and old ones (such as in the Marina, where several buildings collapsed during the 89 earthquake) is that the soil in the marina was simply mixed earthquake (06) spoils that were thrown into wetlands along the bay, and then built on. And the structures that were built have no pilings or other engineered features to help withstand earthquakes….they simply float on top of the mixed gunk that is the marina, and those of us who were around in 89 remember what it looked like when a seismic event rocked that bowl of jello…
Still, it’s hard to imagine that an earthquake won’t have some effect on Mission Bay. I wouldn’t worry about tall buildings falling down, but I would think things could shift around a little. You only have to drive down Howard Street in SOMA (from about 5th to 9th) to get a sense of what earthquakes have done to a formerly flat street.
Somewhat dumb question. OK, dumb question regarding the direction of this string regarding seismic activity. Is the fear of seismic activity driving the fact that a fair number of complexes that I’ve seen use electric stoves instead of gas (the thought being that in an earthquake, the last thing you need is a broken gas line), or is that a red herring (not the high tech publication), and that electric appliances are simply cheaper for the developer in general than gas appliances? In case you’re wondering, I do like gas appliances…
In the event of seismic activity, broken gas would be a secondary problem. Chances are if the gas line breaks in these new buildings, key support structure of the building probably collapsed. Broken gas lines would be the least of your worries.
Cost is the main factor in deciding electric vs. gas appliance. Electric is cheaper than gas appliance. In addition, gas lines is an additional cost to put into the building.
It seems that 325 Berry would have gas stoves. The neighboring building, 235 Berry also has gas stoves + real exhaust pipe for hoods. However 255 Berry is electric.
MissionBayFan, thanks. Interestingly, a good friend lives in the heart of jello city (a.k.a. Marina) and lives in a 1920/30 (guestimate based on what I can see/determine) building with gas throughout…
While not that funny of a situation for my friend, I can’t help but think of the old Monty Python and the Holy Grail scene about the Scottish King who built a castle, but fell into the swamp, rebuilt it, but that one burned down, then fell into the swamp, but then finally built the current one and by God, that one finally stayed up (presumably on the rubble of the previous castles…)
Regarding some of the comments regarding seismic design.
“Bedrock” is often too far below the building to sink footings or piles to in San Francisco. I was involved in the design of a 9 story building on Geary Blvd that included 5 levels of underground parking. When you were standing on the bottom parking level, you still had 260 feet of essentially compressed beach sand beneath your feet until you hit rock. Buildings in these situations are built more like a boat, to “float” in the ground. We had a limited period of time to build the 9 stories of above ground construction on my project because if we didn’t, the below ground parking garage would begin to exude itself out of the ground – like a splinter working its way out of your skin.
Also, a wonderful trivia about the Marina and Seismic issues. When they were analysing the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damage in the Marina, someone had the briliant idea of overlaying a map of the 1910’s Columbis Exposition (where the Palace of Fine Arts came from)over the modern map showing where damage occured. There was a perfect correlation of areas that were only landscaping in the original Exposition Site Plan with locations where modern buildings failed in 1989. Where an Expostion buidling had been located, they had properly prepared the subgrade back in the 1910’s, but they just did the minimum necessary to prepare the landscape areas. When developers came in and built wood frame houses and apartments after the exposition, they in turn did the minimal soil engineering typical for wood frame construction.
Thanks. Redseca2!
Anyone know actual geology of Mission Bay? How far is the bedrock actually is underneath the ground?
I am hoping fairly shallow. I’ve heard 150 feet down. Anyone can confirm?
I know that about 100 years ago, Mission Bay was literally a “bay” – with a harbor for ships. I also heard that it was fairly shallow so it wasn’t practical for larger ships to be docked. At some point in time, it will filled over. Maybe being shallow was the reason why that spot was chosen.
Mission Bay Fan,
Mission Bay when it was a real bay:
http://www.zpub.com/sf/history/sf-1860.gif
You can poke around in sites like this:
http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/wgmt/sfbay/sanfran.html
but I am not sure if you will get the precise answer for a particular building lot.
Also for trivia:
http://www.sanfranciscomemories.com/ppie/map/map-big.gif
For any project like the various Mission Bay condo projects, the developer would have a “Soils Report” prepared by a geotechnical engineer. The report would be based on project specific test bores, chemical analysis of the soil, as well as historic documents and would include a description of the underlying geology and provide recommendations to the Architect and Engineer for issues including, bearing capacity of the soil, seismic design, existing soil contaminants, below grade waterproofing issues and more.