First approved for development in late 2008, granted a three-year extension to start construction by early 2015 back in 2012, and having flirted with bankruptcy and foreclosure, the permits to raze an Outer Parkside block and build 56 condos, with 23,000 square feet of commercial space and an open-air market along Sloat, between 46th and 47th Avenues, have been issued.
And according to the Examiner, the developers of the 2800 Sloat Boulevard project will start demolishing the former Robert’s Beach Motel, Aqua Surf Shop, and John’s Ocean Beach Café buildings on the site this summer and plan to start construction in September.
Comments from Plugged-In Readers
Comments are closed.
Fantastic – this can’t come soon enough. I’m curious to see what kinds of businesses end up filling the retail spaces.
John from John’s Ocean Beach Cafe said the developers told him he could move back into a retail space after it’s constructed. Clearly, it won’t have the same charm (or dust).
wow – that is just shockingly bad design. Again. really we just despair of the SF arts and architecture scene
Renzo Piano can’t design every building…
There’s nothing wrong with good solid ‘background’ buildings – nicely designed, quiet and well proportioned – such as the Mission at 16th renderings above. Not everything should be a ‘starchitect’ designed ego piece, certainly. But there’s another kind of ‘piece’ – a piece of sh*t, which is what this thing is. Seriously – to find even the smallest grace in the renderings of Bakersfield side of the highway strip mall trash like this really reaching. San Francisco’s standards of what is acceptable are so low the bar is buried in the ground
Luckily we have working architects and developers with successful active projects like yourself, intellectuals with such amazingly refined taste, to set us straight!
We need more PROCESS. And more DESIGN REVIEW!
yes; you are lucky, and i’m not joking. Instead of being snarky about it you should be thankful that over the last 15 years some actual talent and people who give a d*mn and can execute have been (mostly) successfully re-shaping San Francisco into a real City
Some people may like your so called “Bakersfield strip mall.” One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. There is no way I would want to live @ the Mission & 16th building.
No one is forcing you to look at this development or buy in it. In fact, the best way you can get a complete direct view is from the ocean. Now surfers and boaters can have a landmark to look for, and maybe a nice place to sit down and eat.
That’s a bit much. We all have to look at ugly buildings
I’d rather have a financially viable development than something puts so much money in some starchitect’s wallet that no ordinary neighborhood business could afford the rent. And I guess I’m just a lowly prole with bad taste, because it looks fine to me. Plantings, different sized massings, rounded rooflines, some color in a foggier part of the city. Stucco does just fine with the humidity around there.
The actual problem is spending the money to build the starchitect’s design. I’m sure BIG is getting paid well, but Google is going to spend a fortune making their design a reality.
But, but, according to Sharperblue, the specific problems with the design are (cheep cheep cheep…I hear nothing. Nothing. Just another “this building is so bad. You are all Phillistines for approving it!”)
if you actually >need< a critique of the universe of things that is wrong with this design you are desperate indeed. Again, I refer you to the glorious urban zeitgeist of Bakersfield strip malls, where this sad assemblage would fit in un-noticed
Your riposte makes my very point. Gestures toward a mythical Bakersfield strip mall (why Bakersfield? There are bad strips throughout the Bay Area. I sincerely doubt that Bakersfield strip malls have three stories of apartments above the retailBut let’s amplify my wit by references to the dirtty Okies in, gasp, Southern California. ). There are “aessemblages” throughout San Francisco. Some were built during YOUR era, 1897.
You don’t like this. We get that. Thank you for your broad and simple and vague opinion.
RIP, John’s Ocean Beach Cafe. May you rise again! This corner of town is sleepy and calm, quite beautiful during these freakishly more common sunny days, so I’ll mourn the loss of that, but with a larger commercial center, and being by the beach, it might end up being a place where zoo-goers stay a bit longer.
Parking gets tight on the weekend, will probably get tighter (and I don’t judge parents with their three kids and stroller full of supplies necessary to last a toddler throughout the day for driving instead of taking the train).
According to the Examiner, 56 spaces are devoted to the commercial units, so I doubt parking will be worsened by this project
Well if there is one thing we’ve learned its that *cheap 4 x 8 plywood panels nailed with soon to rust nails and spray coated with faux stucco* ages GORGEOUSLY when placed right up into the elementals of Oceana. Build on, your ruinous boxes… build on!
You’re right, let’s build it out of redwood.
Dilithium Crystals and High Tension Steel! Or “Graystone”
What bike trike and baby carriage parking only said.
It’d be interesting to see a contemporary take on the ever present Westlake style that dominate most of the area. That, or even some Spanish revival… As mentioned above, I can’t see this aging too well.
Yeh there are also some sort of Art Deco (I think) style buildings near by. this looks like generic Ocean Ave. Would be nice to tie into being near a beach or some nod to Westlake like you say.
Anything will be an improvement over what is there now, and this doesn’t look bad – not going to be a new landmark in this city, but it doesn’t need to be. This neighborhood needs more restaurants and fun stuff. Too many mediocre Chinese restaurants and pizza places right now.
So, mediocre architecture is acceptable, but mediocre food is not. Oh, okay.
It’s funny you say the neighborhood needs more amenities, when it’s actually losing some amenities in order to make room for this building (a diner, surf shop, and a motel). Of course the new building will have retail space too, so that’s nice.
The thing that annoys me though, is that IMO having a hodgepodge of different buildings is a large part of what makes a cityscape interesting. There’s an empty lot on the northwest corner of this block (which has been empty for what? Decades?), that could have had an apartment building with new retail built on it, and the motel, diner and surf shop could have been kept at the same time (would have been a nice spot for a slender 10 story building…LOL yeah right, that makes too much sense for SF). But instead it all gets replaced with one goofy-looking lowrise building, that will no-doubt be prohibitively expensive to live for your average SF resident, despite how cheap it looks. As someone who lives just a couple blocks away, I’m a little disappointed that the whole block is getting demolished and replaced (though now that the entire block is vacant and boarded up, anything new is an improvement). I guess redoing the entire block makes more money, and at least we get some much-needed housing out of the project.
Yet other commenters here complain that this is an “assemblage”. I guess he prefers more monolithic structures?
I see your point about block-sized projects. That does coarsen the urban fabric. All about the bucks, I guess. And ease of permitting and development.
These housing units will move quickly if the floorplans are well designed and finish materials used are durable and practical. Welcome to the neighborhood, cute babies and kids! The nearby zoo animals can’t wait to make new friends with you.
Yeah, those “lush” plantings will certainly survive the nearly constant wind, fog and salt attack. Because mine do on 29th Ave.
Balconies are basically useless most of the year in this part of town. They should be enclosed in glass to give the feeling of being outdoors without actually being outside.
1 parking spot per unit? I thought this was presented as “transit-oriented” development.
“Balconies are basically useless most of the year in this part of town.”
As someone who lives very close to this project, i’m just gonna say that I disagree about balconies (or yards, etc) being useless out here. The sunset gets plenty of fog and wind, but not as much as most people think, in my experience. It also gets plenty of sun (hell, i have cactuses growing in my backyard, right across from the beach). Even on foggy days there are often a few hours in the middle of the day where it’s nice and sunny, even warm….though if you’re only at home in the mornings and evenings, I can see why one might get the idea that the sunset mostly/always has bad weather.
I have to disagree. We have a small, enclosed yard (faces east) that we turned into a two-level patio surrounded by plantings. June-August, guaranteed, it is cold, windy and foggy. Regardless, I put on my fleece and crank the BBQ. Balconies, however, don’t offer that level of protection given their structure and height, especially two blocks from the ocean. For the handful of days (like today, oddly enough) that are clear and calm, I think it makes more sense to take that square footage and make the unit larger. A sunroom would be ideal.
Quite possibly the ugliest thing I’ve seen outside of the zoo.
What’s the commute to downtown like from this location?
45 minutes on the L train. Not great, but at least you’ll get a seat in the morning, being basically end of the line. 25 minutes by car without traffic.
I used to commute to work (Montgomery station) via MUNI metro from Forest Hill station. It was 25 minutes. (Driving into FiDi and parking took 40 mins.) Got a seat most of the time. Amazing what I could accomplish while sitting down without a smartphone back then. More often than not, I saw people in my professional circle on the train and ended up chatting.
I hadn’t thought of the seat factor. That would make the travel time productive. Thanks!
I used to live in my office and it took me 3 min to go from the bathroom to the breakroom to my desk. How awesome is that! BTW, there are 21 stops between Forest Hill and the end of the L.
Jenofla has a point…living at the end of the line guarantees you will get a seat. Probably the only good thing about taking the L from this location. Keep in mind the reverse commute from downtown…it’s a crap shoot. That 45 min (when it’s timed perfectly) can turn ugly in a second when outbound trains turn back at Sunset or 22nd Ave at a moment’s notice…or, like last night, when you have to wait 45 min for an outbound train. The minutes add up.
Interesting, it takes about 15 min from Daly City to Montgomery on BART…same distance if not longer.
Not awesome to “live” in an office. I am surprised @ how most of the jobs in SF are centered in downtown and the financial district creating this dependency on public transit. How about employers move away from the core to attract workers in other neighborhoods? Even China is shifting its main factories from the coast to other inland cities so there is less traffic and the annual great migration for the Lunar New Year is less burdensome on migrant workers and their families.
It’s amazing what just the grade-separation aspect of BART, and any other real transit does, when compared to idiotic at-grade, in-traffic light rail. Combine it with the MUNI obsession with having stops at every block or two, and you get preposterous commutes. My old commute from Civic Center to northwestern South San Francisco (near Pacifica) was only 35 minutes including 5 minutes of walking and 8 minutes of driving from Colma BART. Think how many east bay locations will also have shorter commutes than these residents, thanks to BART. BART all the way to Ocean Beach, andmassive increases in density out here, is the most obvious good idea ever, not that those in charge of SF will ever let that happen. Think about all the bike lanes they will build instead!
Depending on your ability to secure a parking space downtown driving from this dvelopment would probably be the best bet. And think about how much worse most of the Outer Sunset has it, say Ortega St, 5 loooong sunset blocks in either direction just to get to the terminus of either of these tiny, slow, packed trains.
@Ames-
This city is only SEVEN miles wide. It’s not comparable to the entire nation of China. Give me a freaking break. If we cannot get people 7 miles away from home for work, we should just demolish the city, trains and roads and go back to subsistence farming.
^^ there aren’t factories in SF and the great majority of jobs in the Bay Area are not in downtown SF
^^^ also, the part about China is wrong and sounds like some cartoon version. FWIW, increasing labor costs in the more developed/advanced/expensive coastal provinces has been causing investment to seek cheaper labor pools in both inland China and south asian countries since the late 1990s. The vast bulk of the manufacturing is and will remain in the provinces on the coast or along the beijing to guangzhou north/south railroad. It has been like that for more than 2000 years, though I’ve only been doing business there for less than 20 years myself.
UPDATE: Unfinished Block-Sized Development on the Market