It’s been almost three years since we first turned you on to the David Baker + Partners designed development at 1345 Turk, and in two weeks “Fillmore Park” will break ground.
1345 Turk Street offers thirty-two affordable new homes for first-time homebuyers, specifically working families and individuals earning between 70 and 100% of Area Medium Income.
Flats and townhouses with outdoor patios ring a private landscaped courtyard, creating a quiet community just a block from the bustling Fillmore District and walking distance to shopping, entertainment and transportation.
Seven (7) one-bedrooms, seventeen (17) two-bedrooms, and eight (8) three-bedrooms over twenty-four (24) parking spaces. Prices are currently estimated to be “mid-$100,000s to low-300,000s” with construction complete late 2011 or early 2012.
Festivities, refreshments, and perhaps a ceremonial shovel or two on site from 11 am to 12:30 pm on October 21.
UPDATE: A reminder with respect to the substation next door (lower right hand corner in the image above): Bailing On The Substation To Bailout Yoshi’s Et Alli.
For the record, YAY that there are 8, 3-bedroom units. We are families.
And maybe this nifty infill development will draw attention to the fine substation building adjacent and, the fact that the exhaust from the drive-through McDonald’s spews into this development.
“bustling” fillmore district one block away? That presumes that the “jazz district” is a success, which it is not. Things don’t really bustle (at least in a good way) until you cross Geary.
Still, don’t mean to be too snarky, because this is a nice looking development. So wish the substation were integrated into it…it’s sad how long it’s been sitting there, vacant and deaying…
With respect to the aforementioned substation (lower right corned in the second image above): Bailing On The Substation To Bailout Yoshi’s Et Alli.
There’s almost as much bustle on the south side of Geary as on the north, at least in the first couple blocks, though it certainly peters out well before you get to Turk.
I wish the City had held onto this parcel and used it to replace the fire house and nearby police station when their time is up.
I’m going to be blunt here, because blunt in my opinion is what’s needed.
There is a trend in SF to build highly configured, almost fetishistically over-designed “BMR+mixed use+low income” housing.
Everyone is in on the game because it plays better than the hideous ghetto complexes with no promise except the most gross idea of failure.
But the promise of this newest format has not aged well.
Certainly its premier architect is Mr. Baker. A bright guy, but when you meet him and engage, its clear he has a mindset that is absolutist and somewhat hostile toward successful people (even though I count him as one). He comes off as doctrinaire and even mean spirited. Certainly arrogant. Very arrogant.
There is an aggressiveness to the approach that belies its muddled and sagging afterlife.
To see the afterlife, one need only travel to the Fillmore, specifically along streets like Webster, to see how the experiment in state-run quasi ownership has faired over 50 years.
The answer is not well.
The root of the problem is a “good money after bad” affect of throwing funding into the mix of a dead idea — that there is some practical and productive way to split the hairs between housing built by businesses and housing built — with a million politically-driven conditions and rules and sub-rules — by governments.
The stylish on-trend architecture being the main lure and amelioration.
But over time it just doesn’t work. It gets sad looking and its residents have no opportunity for anything greater than stasis.
The rich get richer, and the co-opted get stuck. Their stuck-ness shows, like Berlin circa 1970.
When I’m old,I want to sell what I worked hard for, on the open market. Armageddon earthquakes notwithstanding, I will do well. Meanwhile I keep the place up and take pride in what I accomplished. I’m an owner.
stucco-sux:
70-100% of AMI ain’t the projects.
parking on the sidewalk has become so accepted that it’s now being shown in renderings?
stucco-sux: very politically incorrect, but all very true at the same time.
stucco-sux: Ah, I see. So the only useful people in society are “owners”. Everyone else are just sub-human, second-class citizens. Heck, maybe we shouldn’t even be afforded the right to vote.
And to compare the subsidized housing built in the 1960s (50 years ago) with the housing built from the mid-90s forward under entirely different programs and entirely different formats is just asinine. Go look one of Baker’s developments at the intersection of Folsom and Dore Streets – it’s a far better building than half the cheap market-rate condo crap built in SoMa over the last 10 years.