As we first reported back in 2013:
“Just down the street from where Kaiser Permanente had proposed to build an 84-foot high building at the base of Potrero Hill but met with enough resistance from the “Save The Hill” folks that they moved their building to Mission Bay, the owner of the one-story warehouse at 1301 16th Street has been quietly drafting plans to build a big seven-story building.”
As we added in 2014:
“The plans for a 68-foot-tall building with 276 residential units fronting Carolina, 16th, and Wisconsin Streets, and up to 82 parking spaces in a ground floor garage, have since been submitted to Planning and are now actively under review.”
And while Workshop1’s proposed 1301 16th Street project has since been redesigned to yield 176 larger apartments over 6,900 square feet of ground-floor retail space, a portion of which has been newly rendered as a Sightglass Coffee shop, and parking for up to 111 cars and 264 bikes, the building will still rise up to 68 feet in height.
And in three weeks time, the development could approved by San Francisco’s Planning Commission.
God bless those Save The Hill folks, where would SF be without NIMBY groups?
Also, since I appear the be the first *ahem* HIGHER!
I really hope the increased density makes Muni fix the transit to that area. If your not a biker the crappy Muni service out there will likely convert you to a driver. Potrero Hill is unacceptably isolated from much of the city.
The new 55 bus along 16th is already much better than the 22.
#55 is good, it just needs to run more frequently. And we need a similarly direct line on 7th St. so it’s possible to get to Market St. in less than the 20-25 minutes it takes on #10.
Density (including in the neighborhoods surrounding Potero Hill) does make it easier to run frequent service without losing money. Whether MUNI puts its limited resources there is an other question. Hopefully as Eastern Neighborhoods builds out, this will make sense. If there is as much energy in the neighborhood groups for more transit as there has been for stopping increased traffic and preserving views, maybe it will happen. Seems like the energized people in the area are more the drivers/parkers though.
I can attest that there has been significant advocacy for more transit in Potrero Hill and Dogpatch.
I used to work out there and it was [so bad] that I just walked along 16th until I got to the BART station at Mission.
Thank God they’re building something there. And I am very happy to see that they will add ground floor retail. I’d love a Sightglass there!
That neighborhood is becoming very interesting. My problem is I don’t know what to call it. Lower Potrero Hill is already taken by Dogpatch (although it hardly seems to be used anymore). I don’t really think of this as quite Showplace Square. Baja Potrero? Help?
Is LoPo too cringingly obvious?
Potrero Flats? Or is that already taken by the vicinity around Potrero Ave. and 16th St?
I like it!
LoPoFla? LoPoHi? NoPoHi? SoDeDi? Yeah, SoDeDi is what we should call it.
SodoSopa
I live near 24th and Potrero, and I call it Potrero Flats – just because. It’s Potrero, but not the hill.
Potrero Flats is the most common designation. Only realtors call it Showplace Square.
Personally I favor SoSoMa.
This is the old marshland where Mission Creek emptied into Mission Bay. The Mission Bay shoreline near here was between what is now 7th and 8th streets and Mission Creek east of Bryant was along what became Division St.
this is actualy a pretty nice looking building.
This is great. I’m hoping that filling in all those random warehouses on 16th will make that neighborhood an actual neighborhood. It’s right at the intersection of Potrero, Mission Bay, and the Design District…one day it could be a walkable area.
In particular, it would be nice to see the two projects proposed for the current Corvan warehouse site to move forward but it seems to be facing some serious, organized opposition from the uphill neighborhood.
Organized but far from unanimous. A lot of us “uphill” folks are getting very sick of the NIMBYs. Unfortunately, they’re the ones with all the free time. People with real jobs and families don’t go to daytime planning commission hearings or “community meetings” at 6pm on weeknights.
In their defense, they did take the initiative to engage an architect and come up with a detailed alternative reclaiming the existing structures which would be a suitable repurposing of the current use. I still prefer the two developers’ schemes but it would be wrong to simply dismiss their opponents as NIMBYS.
I really don’t understand those ‘Save the Hill’ people. That location is practically a stone’s throw from the central business district on one of the most economically active and culturally vibrant cities on the West Coast, if not the Western Hemisphere.
This is exactly the sort of place where you are supposed to put big buildings and large numbers of people.
What exactly are they ‘saving’ other than their own sense of entitlement and moral superiority?
To those people, I say the following, and I say it as someone who grew up practically a stone’s throw from that proposed building site, and who has seen all the changes to the hill over the decades, from goats to lofts.
‘Save the Hill’ folks: get off your high horse, stop pretending like you own more than your little 25′ x 40′ piece of land, and allow new people to move into the city and to enjoy what you’ve already come to take for granted.
Although I agree that this is a desirable development, you undercut the merits of proponents’ argument by the absurd description of its location and the usual and unfair ad hominem attack and characterization of its critics.
A “stone’s throw from the central business district”? Are you referring to the wasteland of Mission Bay where there is nothing happening at the street level and the Subway, Starbucks and Walgreen’s are closed after 5:00 and on weekends?
This is very close to CBD, in my opinion.
Note that during the development of the Eastern Neighborhoods plan, it was the groups like Potrero Boosters that fought taller buildings and greater density in Mission Bay that would have actually have given it more street life. An example.
This links to nothing the slightest bit relevant.
I don’t think that’s what the commenter was referring to, but in any case, it’s too early to pass judgement on street-level activity in Mission Bay. people are still moving in, and most retail locations have not opened yet. Reveille Coffee, the first opportunity to test Fourth St’s corridor in this regard, is always well-filled when I walk by in the evenings. (namelink)
Hopefully, all the vacant, available commercial space will now begin to fill up. There is another fantastic location in that same building which is huge, multi-level with wrap around windows. Could easily accommodate an operation like Gordon Biersch when it was originally on the Embarcadero.
that area will be sterile for a very very long time, that’s what happens when you try to have some megablock project development in any city, you can’t manufacture a neighborhood, or culture….. it is sterile, it will likely always be sterile.
It feels like exactly what it is: a neighborhood under construction.
But don’t worry, now that both Market Hall and Reveille Coffee are open, the vagrants are sure to set up camp on 4th St any day, and the dreaded sterility will make way for the crime and human waste – excuse me, “neighborhood character” – you so crave.
Empty buildings don’t hang out at Starbucks. I’m not sure if you were aware of that, but it’s true. Street life in Mission Bay is exactly what you would expect it to be for a still sparsely populated neighborhood under construction. There is noticeably more foot traffic on 4th Street than 12 months ago when there was zero, so your reactionary wet dream that the area has stalled or failed is as false as it is dumb.
@Jake and will be marshland again, soon enough
Whew! Glad we avoided the terrible possibility of having more housing and fewer cars in SF. Thank goodness for community groups fighting for what’s most important!
seconding all those in the ’16th St should look more like this project’ camp. SFMTA is already targeting the corridor for transit improvements (namelink), and I have heard musings of an eventual streetcar route here, connecting Mission/BART with Mission Bay. as others have said, this location is on a major thoroughfare in the midst of both established and rapidly-densifying neighborhoods, and already walking distance to major transit infrastructure, or biking distance to downtown – right where more housing should be.
UPDATE: Potrero Hill Site Approved for a Major Development Now in Play