As a plugged-in reader reports, there’s not much left of the old Jack Tar/Cathedral Hill Hotel and the block should be cleared by the end of the month (click image to enlarge), making room for CPMC’s Cathedral Hill Hospital to rise.

14 thoughts on “Going, Going, And Nearly Gone On Cathedral Hill”
  1. Actually they have to take it down in the opposite order as it was built. They can’t drop anything into the Bay. Actually it is pretty cool to watch them take it down piece by piece. I hope someone does a time lapse video.

  2. sf: Apples to oranges. You can’t just bulldoze the bridge. It’s said that they aren’t allowed to drop a single thing into the bay; whether it is a steel beam or a small bolt. As inclinejj said, it has to be taken down in reverse order.

  3. I have posed this question before on various sites and never seen an answer: Will emergency vehicles be unable to get through traffic to the hospital when there’s gridlock on both Van Ness and Franklin?

  4. ^^^ Not sure but are there streets other than Van Ness or Franklin bounding this city block that could be used if those two streets are congested?

  5. The hospitals at Mission Bay will not be trauma centers. One will be a children’s hospital and the other a women’s health hospital.
    There is a helipad.
    I am pretty sure emergency vehicles will still be routed to SF General.

  6. Tiny Tim, Franklin is seldom an issue. I can see this site from my window because I live a couple blocks away and Franklin is my regular route home. Franklin (N) and Gough (S) are almost always excellent routes, same for Geary.
    Thank god for one way streets. I never got the point of them until I moved here and observed Van Ness (constant mess) compared to those two efficient, timed streets.

  7. Van Ness is shown on maps as State Highway 101 which means non-locals transiting the city don’t know to use the other streets. I think that explains part of the gridlock. The badly times lights explains more of it (SF calls this “traffic calming”; I call it “traffic frustration” and it leads to the epidemic of red light running the city has). Nevertheless, I don’t see the issue of emergency vehicles here as any worse than at St. Francis or other hospitals.
    As for where such vehicles are routed, SF General will still be the one and only trauma center, and trauma victims should still go there. For other conditions such as suspected heart attacks, the “closest hospital” is usually the destination of choice and for much of the city north of market and west of Van Ness that could be California Pacific.

  8. @gribble
    Ignore me above, got confused as to which area we were discussing. I was thinking of the UCSF at Mission Bay hospitals not the CPMC one where Jack Tarr used to be.

  9. As far as Van Ness congestion goes, it seems to me that ambulances will easily be able to use the planned BRT lanes, which will rarely if ever have any congestion.

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