The public hearing for the proposed 14-story building to rise on the northwest corner of First and Harrison, a prominent Rincon Hill parcel which is currently occupied by a Union 76 gas station, has been slated for March 24.
As we first reported last year, the plans for the 390 1st Street development include 180 apartments – a mix of 16 micro units, 34 studios, 58 one-bedrooms, 61 two-bedrooms and 11 three-bedrooms – over a garage for 84 cars and a little 600-square-foot café on the corner.
And as designed by TCA Architects, the full 134-foot height of the building would step down to five and seven stories along Lansing and Harrison.
Why ban automobiles when you can instead get rid of all parking spots, gas stations, and auto shops?
Muah hahahaha
It is kind of scary that there are fewer and fewer gas stations now. Better start saving for that 100% electric car…
It’s not so unrealistic being that electric car sales have more than doubled every year for the last 5 years straight and California also has the highest adoption rate of all states.
Not to mention otherwise unprofitable gas stations sit on extremely valuable and underutilized land (that people very rarely oppose being developed).
yeah, electric cars don’t need parking spots or mechanics…
if they’re self-driving, correct. The mechanics and parking spots can be out in Modesto where land and labor is cheaper.
that’s a long way to pay for a tow.
Yep.
“scary” ? Scary is that the world will be warming several degrees and the oceans rising several feet and Americans have to be forced against their will to do anything about it.
Not scary at all. Manhattan has very few gas stations, and it’s not a problem. In most of America, we’re just used to having gas stations on every major intersection.
Scary? LOL. President Trump is scary. Fewer gas stations in mildly inconvenient
I’ll bet that half of the business at that station are people low on gas after sitting through a dozen blocks of traffic on all the downtown streets to get to the bridge. Perhaps there will be an increase of people running out of gas on the bridge if (when) this station closes.
Sounds like grist for the EIR to address.
How often do you see a full gas station with lines? Not often? That generally means that they are over-supplied.
Generally, a rarity of queues across a supply network means that the customer’s time is more valuable than the timecost of whatever resource they would queue for, in this case a gas pump. Most customers buy gasoline on price and convenience. Gas stations are notorious for small margins and usually have enough gas pumps so they don’t have to cut prices further to make it worth waiting in line. In the US, convenience stores sell most of the gas, but make most of their profit from store purchases not gasoline. Making people wait in their cars is not convenient and doesn’t generate junk food sales.
BTW, there are something like a dozen gas stations scattered around SF that consistently price to be cheapest in their hood and they often do have cars queued. The main issue in SF driving the replacement of gas stations with condos is the very high ROI on condos. Might say the undersupply of housing is more a factor than the equilibrium of gas station supply/demand.
“Most customers buy gasoline on price and convenience.” If this is true then this is the worst gas station in the state. The prices are astronomical and it’s impossible to get to.
This gas station is very convenient and easy to get to for the thousands of cars that pass by it during the commute every workday and it is the last gas station most of them will pass for many miles. That’s how they can charge prices about 10% higher than the lowest prices in SoMa. It is only “impossible to get to” when the line of cars is too long.
The leaders of SF think too small, building little patchwork projects with no real big idea agenda. For one, All of 1st st. should be tunneled underground from Market to the Bay Bridge. Who is going to sit at the corner cafe proposed here? Would you like combustible particles with your soy latte?
And from the looks of the rendering, it looks like 1st st. and Harrison are going to be narrowed even more, causing even more gridlock. I love that there are only 3 cars in traffic depicted in the rendering.
I don’t really get the point or points you are trying to make. Maybe just dissatisfaction? What is your “big idea agenda”?
Tunneling underground? Really? Please focus on reality. This is not a little patchwork project, but an appropriately scaled infill in a downtown neighborhood.
tunnel underground? how is that going to even work there? you have to get onto the bridge and you have to pop out above ground somewhere to do that – and there is simply not enough room after harrison since the freeway is about 100 feet away from that intersection.
If we want to do it right, we should just get rid of the 1st street entrance altogether and make an on ramp that starts from first street between howard and folsom that goes to the essex onramp alongside the existing fremont exit ramp. If you do this right it could be a 2-lane entrance (or, make it 1 lane and then you can make the bryant on ramp have a dedicated lane instead of the current yield or stop sign it has now). Or keep first street as the ‘contraflow lane exit’ that they are currently looking to put on essex but there is a building in the way.
The only reason there are 2 on ramps one block apart today is because the lower deck used to be a 2-way truck lane, and these ramps are remnants from those days – first street used to be exit only for trucks and essex was the entrance for trucks – the lower deck did not exist past essex. The upper deck was 3 lanes each way and ended at 5th street. When reconfigured in the early 60s, they decided to keep 1st and essex as on ramps in same direction and of course they got rid of the trains so they should continue the lower deck past essex.
“If we want to do it right, we should just get rid of the 1st street entrance altogether and make an on ramp that starts from first street between howard and folsom that goes to the essex onramp alongside the existing fremont exit ramp.”
You’ve just described a portion of the Embarcadero Freeway. If you look closely around the present intersection of Mission and Beale, you can see traces of the old on-ramp from that location.
Speaking of which, is anything planned for that strip along Beale from Howard to Mission? It looks like it could use a building.
Are you asking about the “strip” where the future 43 floor Park Tower is now under construction or the strip across the street where the Transbay Terminal is under construction?
I’m talking about the strip directly east of both the park tower under construction and the building directly north of that.
The most recent study of options to max throughput on the bridge (namelink) looked at making 1st HOV only, connecting First to Essex via road under Fremont ramp, and close Sterling. Currently the 3 ramps pump 4-5k vehicles/hr peak onto the bridge. One ramp can’t do that. Having ramps on both sides also pinches the through traffic and reduces overall throughput.
I can’t imagine living near that intersection during the evening commute.
exactly what I was thinking. I work in an office building a couple blocks away and it’s always ridiculous starting about 3pm with inevitable honking and stuff. I suppose you would just try not to be at home before 7pm.
Does the city have a plan to turn those surrounding streets into tree-divided boulevards as depicted in the rendering?
Don’t know where that comes from, but I love this project. Can’t be in place soon enough IMO.
This seems to cover up the living wall installations on the northeast-facing side of the Jasper.
San Francisco–where we have everything we need . . . well, just not . . . gas.
When there’s enough demand for gas stations property owners will stop pulling them out. Simple.
I can care less about a gas station that is difficult to get to from only two streets vs four. We need affordable housing units in this project where is the 33%?
UPDATE: Development to Replace Rincon Hill Gas Station Closer to Reality