The challenges we first reported last year are taking their toll on the Commonwealth Club which has now signed a two-year lease for the former San Francisco Press Club space at 555 Post Street and will be moving next month, delaying any move into the building at 110 The Embarcadero which they purchased two years ago and have been trying to expand and renovate.
While the Club has twice prevailed in the appeals of their plans for the building which have been heard by the Planning Commission, a third appeal will be heard by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors at the end of the month. And according to the Chronicle, fighting the appeals will cost the Club around $1 million.
Unffing believable. The plans for the waterfront location look completely reasonable. What is wrong with this city.
What’s wrong? Nobody paid off Peskin.
And what’s particularly sad is that if anyone in this City is placed in a way to effect change in the planning process, it should be members of the Commonwealth Club. If they can’t convince their network to work to simpify the planning process, then the rest of us truly are doomed.
Someone wants to freeze the facade like a movie scene in 1934?? Too bad the longshoremen are dead by now. Maybe the owner should be required to hire a bunch of actors to reenact the scene everyday so as be faithful to the historical event.
Some of the downtown shops should be banned from fixing their damaged windows because it is testimony to extremely important historical event like the occupy movement or anti-police killing movement. Just say no to change.
When I tell people about this kind of stuff in other markets they think I’m making it up. Anyone who isn’t sitting on a river of endless tech or real estate cash should attempt to do anything with property inside the city.
Two appeals is crazy. Three is obscene. Building codes, planning, etc. are all important functions of a city like SF, but we have taken it well past any rational threshold.
NIMBYS always want the city to adhere to the planning code, yet when something is approved, they think the code doesn’t apply to them and they have the right to appeal it.
Welcome Commonwealth Club to 555 Post Street. We love you here. Sometimes you need to know ultimately this neighborhood is the better fit. I agree for $1 million, you could have done so much more in terms of getting really excellent world-renowned speakers for the educated crowd. You need to put forth more speakers advising the public on navigating through the myraid of useless laws of SF.
Enjoy them for two years, then they are moving into their new building. And, the $1 million is already spent, so it is a moot point what it could or could not have been better spent on.
I’m confused… all the planning experts in this city have agreed with the Commonwealth Club, so now we appeal to the non experts? And if that falls through we appeal to the general public?
I thought that normally appeals should be heard by people who are more expert in the field, not less.
If you think the planning commissioners are ‘experts’ on anything, you haven’t been paying attention in the slightest. Rather they are unelected pawns of politicians and developers, not really representing the will of the people in any way whatsoever.
In San Francisco, anyone who is expert is disqualified from decision making as “conflicted” so only the uninformed are allowed to make the decisions.