Amongst the items on San Francisco’s Historic Preservation Commission’s agenda this afternoon, the proposed re-development of the “L” shaped parking lot and ad hoc addition to the corner “Double Play” building at 2401 16th Street.
The proposed project is the retention of the existing [three-story corner building which was constructed in 1909], the demolition of the existing 13-foot-tall, 1,130-square-foot horizontal addition that was constructed in 1992, and the construction of a four-story, 40-foot-tall, 23,048-square-foot, residential building containing 12 residential units and 12 ground-floor parking spaces with ingress and egress from Bryant Street.
UPDATE: With respect to a reader’s question as to why they’re proposing to build around the three-story building on the corner, or at least in part: “The [corner building] appears eligible for the California Register as an individual property for its association with the San Francisco Seals, San Francisco’s Pacific Coast League baseball team from 1944 until 1957.”
∙ San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission Agenda: 4/6/11 [sf-planning.org]
∙ 2401 16th Street Request for Review [sfplanning.org]
What’s the rationale for making the Bryant St face only one story? To preserve the billboards?
^^^Seriously! Fill that in. It looks like a missing tooth.
Hopefully there’s a nice roof deck on top of the garage entrance..
And seriously, why bother retaining the corner building? Are they seriously going to keep existing tenants in there all through construction (rent board petition bonanza!)? Surely it makes more financial sense to relocate, demolish, rebuild good quality housing and move them back in (even if rent-controlled and lifetime leases etc.)? If it’s for the hysterical preservation then I’d say there’s not much of a resource there left to “protect” (the cornices perhaps but not the fake-brick, stucco and cheap replacement windows – or maybe the Double-Play is some former supervisor’s favorite watering hole?). It’s certainly not a good land-use decision to retain that building.
[Editor’s Note: “The [corner building] appears eligible for the California Register as an individual property for its association with the San Francisco Seals, San Francisco’s Pacific Coast League baseball team from 1944 until 1957.”]
^^^ An article about locating the home plate of the former Seals diamond : http://laughingsquid.com/the-search-for-home-plate-at-seals-stadium/
I walked by there all the time. What a nice and convenient location. If I live there I’ll get rid of my car and get a nicer bike.
OMG. Hopefully that gaping hole will catch the eye of at least one (if not a majority) of the commissioners.
It’s a real shame the parking ratio is so high, but it’s good infill otherwise, IMO. And the Double Play building is gorgeous!
Keep the Double Play. It’s one of the few remaining links to the San Francisco Seals and the Mission Reds.
I’m glad the parking ratio is 1:1. that’s what the code says.
You’re glad the parking ratio is 1:1 because that’s what the code says? Codes aren’t commandments, honey. And good cities need better codes than those that call for 1:1 parking. Fact.
@Pedestrianist: yet another spouting of the anti-car-ownership mantra. When has anyone ever demonstrated any nexus between availability of parking spaces in urban residential buildings and urban miles driven? Any time anyone asks to see data to back up such assertions they are met with a blank “because I say so – it must be true. Fact”.
In my experience of managing multiple buildings in SF (some “older” i.e. rent-controlled, some “newer” i.e. market rate), the parking garages are typically more than 2/3 full during the daytime commute periods and very empty at weekends. It also appears that the emptiness of the parking garage at commute times increases with the distance of the building from the downtown/core.
To me, this means that most residents are using transit to get to work and are using their cars for convenience at weekends and evenings – why should the zealots who attend planning commissions dictate to the rest of us that this should not be allowed? (and, more importantly, why do our representatives and city servants kow-tow to this tyrannical behavior?).
Pedant – Your observations match what I’ve noticed with street parking as well. Car share and ordinary rental options can partially address the the need for weekend car usage. What’s really needed is a more comprehensive land use and transportation policy to reduce the need for weekend car use. It may be a long road to get there and adding more parking just makes the road longer.
Pedant – it’s pretty obvious (the data is easily available) that the neighborhoods in SF with the lowest auto-ownership rates have the least amount of parking (more correlation there than even with income). Are you seriously disputing that?
So the debate is mainly about the parking? One could easily turn Pedestrianist’s statement around: Good cities need better designed buildings, not more mediocre bottom-line-driven cookie-cutter housing projects. Fact.
I am all for a more pedestrian/cyclist city. For instance this area around Valencia and the Mission would be awesome without car traffic. Think 3rd Street Promenade without the chain stores.
But to do that, we should have:
1 – A decent public transportation like a subway network that is more than the current useful but underwhelming backbone.
2 – Caltrain would actually go somewhere people want to go on WEs (Tahoe, Marin, LA).
3 – Financing for all of this, which means people accepting higher taxes for better service.
Maybe the HSR will bring some people towards this utopia. But it has to start from the infrastructure, not the lowest level. Otherwise people who suffer the consequences of less cars/poor public transport usually get angry and vote against going ahead.
@anon: are you putting the cart before the horse here? Not clear from your statement which “fact” you think drives the other.
I think (correct me if I’m wrong) you are starting with the assertion that low auto-ownership rates are per se a good thing. I would ask you to back up that assertion if you want to push this belief on others. I would claim that the goal should instead be lower urban mileage driven (by low-occupancy internal-combustion-powered vehicles at least): your telling people that they should not own a car is more than a little insulting to their intelligence.
I was just stating a fact of the current planning code.
Seems that Pedestrianist got her panties all in a knot for that fact.
If you don’t like the current codes, work to change them.
“A decent public transportation like a subway network that is more than the current useful but underwhelming backbone. ”
In order to have a subway, you need more density. Geary is ripe for it, but the NIMBYs won’t allow it. In addition, as I mentioned on another thread, it wouldn’t be hard for density to happen organically if lot mergers were allowed and density wasn’t actively discouraged, but the NIMBYs won’t allow that either.
“2 – Caltrain would actually go somewhere people want to go on WEs (Tahoe, Marin, LA).”
I hope part of this becomes true, but don’t have a lot of confidence. Hopefully HSR will be built as planned, so LA will be possible. However, the traffic to Tahoe is probably too inconsequential and seasonal to substantiate a passenger train. In addition, good luck getting Marin NIMBYs to agree on a train — they have failed us many times before, and failed us even on SMART (which passed because of Sonoma County, not Marin, and only goes to the ferry terminal to SF, not to SF). If only we had built the original 5-county BART plan…
I’m not interested in the parking debate — it has been rehashed way too many times here before.
It’s pure lunacy to think that people will buy a car they don’t need just to fill a parking space. It’s also pure lunacy to think that people will get rid of their car based on the lack of a parking space if there are any other factors driving one’s need for a car. It really boils down to people who have a religion-like set of beliefs around car ownership. No amount of reason will overcome their beliefs.
Just for reference, I own a car that I don’t need and sits at home most of the time. Why not? Parking came bundled with the property and is a “free” sunk cost.
When shopping for my next home I see many that don’t have a parking spot for my car. I’d gladly get rid of the car for the right home.
Sincerely,
A. Lunatic
When we rented and paid $250 month for parking we were very close to ditching our 1 car. Then we bought a condo with a deeded space. We hung on to the car due to the monthly expense of keeping it being reduced. In reality, we could get by quite well without owning a car and using Zipcar 3 or 4 times a month.