In 2009 the proposed developer of 74 approved units at 64/72 Townsend filed for bankruptcy. And in 2011, the existing office space at 72 Townsend was leased to Federated Media which was expected to delay any development by at least 5 years.
The building permits to add seven stories and seventy-four units atop the existing 31-foot building were quietly reinstated at the end of last year. And if a plugged-in reader is correct, construction should commence in March and be completed by the end of 2014.
Kinda cool.
This neighborhood is filling in fast. The office building down the block currently being renovated just scored a tenant for the whole space. Plans are moving forward for a new building on Brannan between 2nd and 3rd in the ATT parking lot. Crazy times.
Yes, it’s filling in fast and the only new transit arriving in the next decade is the Central Subway which isn’t saying much in terms of improving transit as you basically get one station at Folsom and 4th. The Caltrain extension to TT is on the table, but no timeline set yet.
And that’s why we need 1:1 parking for new residential.
That’s why we need to lobby for more transit, not more parking!
(Although I don’t see anything wrong with having the option of having a car. If there is traffic on the streets yet there is a subway of course you’d rather take the subway)
Who needs “new” transit? Just increase the frequency of the lines that are in the area, when and if they become full. Make sure they’re running reliably. It’s not rocket science.
Need both more transit and more parking. It’s not like the local residents can’t afford cars and can only travel by Muni.
As much as Id like there to be new subway lines, it doesn’t seem plausible for a long time.
Muni needs to run the trains on time, have more of them, and have some way that we can track them better with a phone app. When I lived in DC the trains would come every 3-5 minutes during rush hour, Ive never experienced that here.
The whole light rail / subway idea was a terrible one from the start, but I guess it’s what we are stuck with. We have trains that can hold very limited amounts of people which makes little sense when they’re underground. Furthermore the subway is limited by the reality of surface traffic when the trains are in LRV mode.
@mark
Almost got it right…there are really two 4th street boarding stations for the Central.
“…Central Subway which isn’t saying much in terms of improving transit as you basically get one station at Folsom and 4th.”
We (that’s those of us who have lived here in the SoMa for last 20 years or more) convinced Muni to put in a surface boarding station @ 4th and Brannan for the Central extension because of the anticipated growth in the SoMa. They balked at idea at first…then acquiesced after having lots of discussions over future growth in the SoMa. Now they look like genius’s for putting a platform where it’s needed.
We did all of that while convincing the engineers at Muni to route the Central line down 4th instead of 3rd. Original plans for the Central had the train turning on 3rd @ King and going underground at South Park then turning again @ Market & Kearney to travel up Geary. It was a nutty route…something about extending out Geary over the next 40 years.
You guys really need to come to more of these planning meetings.
@illtake: Yes, I am fully aware of the surface station at Brannan/4th and should have been more specific. Also, I’ve been following the planning process from the start. The insane version of running it on 3rd with a split portal and then zigzagging around Kearny/Geary just proves how clueless the planners were. Fortunately, pressure forced them to approve the straight shot along 4th and Stockton, albeit eliminating any chance for a Geary extension with no station provisions built into the proposed Union Square station.
@alai: Clearly, you don’t see my point. The Market St. subway cannot handle any more traffic than it currently has. Perhaps if MUNI separated a couple of its lines in the Market St tunnel (e.g., run the N line under Duboce, along Division and down Folsom), then it can possibly clean up its act in the Market St. tunnel and run more trains on fewer lines. Also, I’m not limiting my opinion to just MUNI…BART will need a new transbay tube in the next decade. Where it ends up in SF can make a huge difference on traffic patterns and transit preferences in SOMA.
@ Mark
I found your take on Muni on Market dead on target.
“Clearly, you don’t see my point. The Market St. subway cannot handle any more traffic than it currently has. Perhaps if MUNI separated a couple of its lines in the Market St tunnel (e.g., run the N line under Duboce, along Division and down Folsom), then it can possibly clean up its act in the Market St. tunnel and run more trains on fewer lines. Also, I’m not limiting my opinion to just MUNI…BART will need a new transbay tube in the next decade. Where it ends up in SF can make a huge difference on traffic patterns and transit preferences in SOMA.
May I dare ask a question? What is your take on a shinny new 19,000 seat arena at piers 30-32 and the impacts it will have on Muni and the “N” line?
I have my own take..but I would like to hear from others that understand the limitations of Muni.
Sorry for asking in this forum, but you seem to know what your taking about.
BART can still increase capacity with its existing tunnels quite a bit if it gets up to the 90-second frequency levels of other subway systems.
Likewise, is it really true that the Market St. subway can’t carry any more capacity? I was under the impression that the current capacity was severely constrained by a control system that prevents boarding two trains at a station (though they fit perfectly well), by policies that forbid changing a J train to an N train when the Ns are packed and the Js are empty (despite there being no physical reason this couldn’t be done), and so on.
Of course these ideas will require significant investments in improved technology and significant improvements in competent management, which is all a challenge– but don’t tell me “we can’t get competent people so the only choice is to dig a new $4 billion tunnel”. Because that’s just dumb.
And, of course, we can run buses too, on the surface. They’ve already started with the Nx– I think it’s a cop-out, done to avoid fixing the problems on the N, but if what you need is capacity it’s perfectly reasonable to run both.
Maybe we still need new tunnels. And that’s fine, in the long run. But priority one, obviously, should be to get the existing stuff performing well. And it’s not.
UPDATE: 74 Condos Ready To Rise At 72 Townsend Street.