The old Schlage Lock factory along Bayshore Boulevard closed in 1999, was left derelict for a decade, and was finally razed in 2009 in order to make way for a 20-acre transit village to rise.
Waylaid by the Great Recession and Governor Jerry Brown’s shuttering of local redevelopment agencies in 2012, today, Mayor Ed Lee is slated to announce the redevelopment of the Schlage Lock site is back on track with plans to break ground on over 1,600 housing units, a couple of parks, and retail – including a full-service supermarket – in 2015.
With little infrastructure in place, the redevelopment will take a decade to completely finish. The retrofitting of Schlage’s historic office building left standing at the corner Bayshore and Blanken should occur early on.
Love it. Another blighted area of the city starting down a new path.
How cool would it be if those white blocks on the rendering weren’t just placeholders, and it would actually look like that? Frosted white glass colored to match exactly with stucco, etc. That would be sweet.
Also, this plan is waaaaay too suburbanish. A few towers poking out, or at least 8 story heights throughout, would be much more appropriate for a city.
I associate this area with the Swift meat packing plant which I believe closed in 1968.
Its a good story on SF housing finally. Large quantities, moderate income for working people, right height, high density, and a major investment in housing thats outside of soma/downtown, and it looks like IF the details are handled right by planning– and that is a big if –the end result design quality could make this a really unique area.
hope they dont let is silde into bland suburban developer mediocrity.
Weird, I was literally just wondering about this huge open area this morning. Pretty suburbanish, but that’s unsurprising.
Any thoughts about putting a pedestrian bridge mid development over CalTrain tracks to connect the development to the Bayshore CalTrain station?
Great news for D10. The T lightrail and having a full size supermarket will help make this area more relevant to Bayview.
I wonder what the mix of affordable to market rate housing will be? I’m guessing market rate 2br condos will be north of $500k. Also, I’m guessing that the nasty visitation housing projects across the street will also be redone in the same timeframe. Probably a similar mix/feel to the new shipyard, of mostly market rate (70%?) and low to moderate income housing, but at least it will (hopefully) be well managed, and not the disaster of the HUD agency.
That is a pretty huge area, 1600 homes seems low.
^80 homes per acre is less than what many new apartment complexes in the burbs are managing these days. It’s pathetically low.
There was talk of extending the T third through this development to link directly to Caltrain station, I wonder if that is still on the table. It would be great to at least leave room for it to happen. I’m not sure how many transfers there would be, but connectivity is always good.
There is currently a ped bridge over the tracks, at the station itself.
What is a “transit village” ?
Is it related to the famous phrase “transit rich, transit first” ?
Being next to a caltrain station is better than not, but the Bayshore station is hardly useful, as it’s is served only by local trains (1/hr)
If Electrification happens, service can be tripled or qualdrupled.
They got one of these down in Burlingame…
Anyway. How come large developments look just like small developments?
Go UP. Make more parkland.
conifer,
I think the literal translation is “tax subsidies.”
related question is what is going on with the Brisbane Bayshore redevelopment. There is a lot of land directly south of here that is undeveloped (and I think used to be the garbage dump?)
That was the old Southern Pacific Rail Yard, abandoned when the Union Pacific bought out SP in 1990’s.
while I am excited to see the Schlage property developed I’m not sure housing is the best option adjacent to what is going to be HSR, if and when, sometime in the future.
How many are going to purchase homes and then complain about the noise etc. from the trains like Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Burlingame and Belmont?
A better use would be light industrial or office buildings next to the tracks with homes being further west.
Wish the developer the best, but I’m fairly certain redevelopment will take a lot more than a decade to completely finish unless someone working for the developer has some kind of prescience regarding the necessary environmental cleanup and remediation that’ll have to take place once they start digging into that site and built that into the project.
Any thoughts about how this might affect the market for Visitacion Valley singe family homes? In particular, would some of the relatively prosperous areas such as near McLaren Park benefit? Or will VV remain a no-go zone for aspiring upmarket homebuyers due to the Sunnydale and Geneva projects?
A lot of negativity on here today – a huge empty space and derelict buildings are going to be converted to housing, and it’s whine whine whine. You got better ideas – and the money to make them happen (and pro-formas showing you making a decent return on that equity), then by all means go approach the City and current developer and make them an offer.
And an 8-story tower in Visitacion Valley would be completely INappropriate. Even within the City’s boundaries, there are plenty of places where plopping a tower does not make sense.
^You’re suggesting the developer would not like to build appropriate density here? lol. lol. lol.
We could have an all 8 story development ready to go tomorrow if the city allowed it.
8 stories is not a tower.
the Bayshore station is hardly useful, as it’s is served only by local trains (1/hr)
Today it is. When this and other developments nearby are completed, I’d bet that this will have a whole bunch more passengers coming and going, and consequently Caltrain will take the obvious step of stopping more trains there.
Well, it will be interesting to see if MUNI ever extends the T to the Bayshore Caltrain station like it said it would.
I agree that 8 stories isn’t a tower. Heck, with the word “suburban” being tossed around we’re looking at heights here similar to the western SOMA plan.
Fully agree that towers aren’t appropriate everywhere, but:
1. Eight stories is not a tower.
2. Actual towers (say, 20-25 stories) are very appropriate here, there’s a heavy rail station directly adjacent to this, for crying out loud?!? That station could easily be scaled up, instead, we’re talking about building towers at Park Merced and Treasure Island, where no heavy rail exists. Mind-boggling.
We need to learn from places like Washington DC and Vancouver BC that towers spread across the region at heavy rail stops are very appropriate and desirable.
I think the economics of building something over 6 stories pencils out very thin because city and fire codes require additional construction protections and procedures. So a developer can actually earn more profit building 4 stories than 8 stories.
This looks like a decent project which will do absolutely nothing to east the housing cost crisis.
At least I can agree with you re: ParkMerced and Treasure Island (though in the former case, capital improvements to the Muni line, including moving it out of the median of 19th, are part of the redevelopment plan).
I think the economics of building something over 6 stories pencils out very thin because city and fire codes require additional construction protections and procedures. So a developer can actually earn more profit building 4 stories than 8 stories.
So then there’d be no problem with rezoning this for 85′. If developers can only pencil out at a lower height, that’s what they’ll build. Why ban completely reasonable Paris-like heights? Is it just the worry that they may pencil out at some point, so we better get ahead of that and legislate out the possibility?
At least I can agree with you re: ParkMerced and Treasure Island (though in the former case, capital improvements to the Muni line, including moving it out of the median of 19th, are part of the redevelopment plan).
The Muni line has literally 1/50th the potential capacity of the Caltrain/HSR line.
Jackson – HSR will be traveling no faster than Caltrain currently does at this point along the line. The nearby turns are too sharp to support full speed. In general HSR will be running significantly slower than its top speed along the peninsula.
Noise is unlikely to be an issue. A bigger issue is straightening the curve at this location for the benefit of both HSR and Caltrain. The curve is good for just over 85mph, which is fine for Caltrain’s current needs, but both upgraded Caltrain trains and HSR could benefit from increasing the curve speed to 125mph. There’s nothing to prevent this happening right now, but it will be much more difficult to fix once the right-of-way is constrained by new housing.
When everything around is 2 or 3 stories, 8 is a tower. I once lived in a neighborhood of dense, but 2 and 3 story, townhomes, with a 10-story building 2 blocks away. The presence of such a building does change the feel of the entire neighborhood, and is out of place in such a neighborhood. There’s no reason to build the entire City & County out to 8 or 10 or 20 stories. We actually still can have decent low-rise neighborhoods – just like London or Paris or even Manhattan – without having to plop towers everywhere.
When everything around is 2 or 3 stories, 8 is a tower.
No, just no. Ridiculous statement.
Nearly every neighborhood in SF has eight story buildings sprinkled through them, without causing “damage” to the neighborhood or feeling out of place. I lived in the Outer Richmond in a two story building across the street from an eight story building for three years (and yes, lived to tell about it! I’m fairly certain the building never caused me harm).
You know what’s great about a blank slate development bordered on one side by train tracks and on the other side by a massive road? There are no neighbors that you’re building right next to. If all buildings in the new development are 8+ stories, no need to worry about the big bad building coming to eat your children, because all of the buildings are big!
And again, people, this is right next to a piece of multi-billion dollar infrastructure. Everyone here is always complaining about transit not being improved, yet here we have a case where the transit IS ALREADY THERE. Build ultra-dense here so that you don’t have to other places, and Caltrain can re-jigger the schedule to have additional trains stop. It’s the ultimate no-brainer. I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised in SF, but wow, the rest of the world must be laughing at us if we can’t even bother to build dense in such an OBVIOUS location.
A lot of comments here about extending the T Third trolley line down to this site. I guess you guys don’t realize that the T Third end-of-line is already literally right next to the site at the corner of Bayshore and Sunnydale.
related question is what is going on with the Brisbane Bayshore redevelopment. There is a lot of land directly south of here that is undeveloped (and I think used to be the garbage dump?
You mean the huge railyards that is right next to the garbage dump? Or the old rail turn around. That area like the garbage dump is loaded with toxic waste.
I’ve lived in neighborhoods of single family homes with 30 story condo towers randomly thrown in — with one quite literally adjacent to my property line. It wasn’t a big deal at all, and I can’t understand what the problem is.
The scale is VERY appropriate for this neighborhood.
The comments about the T-third (anon at 7:35) were about extending it from the current terminus THROUGH this site to the Caltrain Station. It was the plan when the T third was conceived. From the way this plan has been presented it’s apparently no longer on the table. Instead it talks about a pedestrian link between the two. It’s not a great distance, but the complete connection, IMHO, would have been a good thing.
“That area [railway yard] like the garbage dump is loaded with toxic waste.”
It is also a major liquefaction zone and the reason why Hwy-101 and Caltrain will be out of commission after the Big One.
Great to see something happening there. I just wish there was more variety to each complex. When you get 5-10 similar styled buildings of that size together it just says “future slum” to me.
^ ph-goat that illustration is a massing plan. It wasn’t necessarily what the completed buildings will look like.