A Big Hearing for that Downsized Mid-Market Development
August 10, 2016
Having been appealed on both historic and contemporary grounds, the Planning Commission hearing to determine if the modern 12-story development designed to rise at 950 Market Street – covering half the triangular Mid-Market block bound by Market, Turk and Taylor while leaving The Warfield and Crazy Horse Theater buildings in place – can move forward as proposed has been tentatively scheduled for October 13.
Once again, while the BIG plans for a 200-foot-tall building with a 75,000-square-foot arts center, 300 units of housing, and a 250-room hotel to rise on the site have been ditched in favor of the shorter development for which a rezoning won’t be required, the proposed 120-foot-tall building designed by Handel Architects will still yield 242 condos, a 232-room hotel and 16,600 square feet of retail space spread across the development’s ground floor.
But the development would raze the existing buildings across the 950-974 Market Street site, buildings which were recently identified as contextual resources for LGBTQ History in San Francisco. And as such, in addition to a generic appeal of the project by Sue Hestor’s ‘San Franciscans for Reasonable Growth’ movement, the co-author of the LGBTQ Historic Context Report had requested the proposed development be required to complete a detailed Environmental Impact Report (EIR).
If the redesigned 950 Market Street project survives its appeal, is approved by Planning and manages to break ground, it will then take an estimated 27 months to build.
Comments from Plugged-In Readers
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I am gay.
So something gay happened a that location once. Maybe twice. That means preserving a low-value, unattractive and forgotten building? I love this city, but sometimes I hate it.
Please email the Planning Commission and say this! They’re the ones who need to hear from you and I doubt they read SocketSite comments. 🙂
3 planning commissioners are on Twitter, and although your tweet won’t go into the official record, they do read and respond there:
@PlannerWu – pretty much votes agains everything that isn’t a unanimous yes.
@rodneyfong – pretty much votes for everything that isn’t a unanimous no
@PlnCom_Richards – is a swing vote
I’m willing to bet that the people who identified this “LGBTQ resource” aren’t gay, but just landowners that want their property values to go up, and are hoping the gay community takes the bait.
Torger, I’m with you on both the gay and the love/hate. Build it.
Make that 3 for 3. It’s beautiful; build it!
save the strip club
That proposed building ain’t very pretty. 1950’s “space age” beehive.
So true, it looks just every other 50’s building. I think you were reading way too many early sci-fi books.
moving along at a glacial pace I see…
also- what on earth would they even do with the old buildings as “LGBTQ resources”?? turn them into a museum? Put a plaque on it and keep it decrepit? As a gay guy, tear it down. go away sue.
This is a depressing, oversized bland building – it should look better and be lower.
this is a semi-depressing very squat buidling. it should certainly be taller
this is a manic-depressive building that needs therapy and/or klonopin. it should certainly be narrower.
Gawd, I hope you two aren’t real architects or the entire city will be in trouble.
It needs Conversion Therapy so it can be a Godly NeoVictorian edifice, which is the only thing permitted in our Holy City!
It should be both lower and taller and bigger and smaller and a single family house. Until the architects come back with the exact building I am imagining in my head, we should keep things exactly as they are.
Laughed Out Loud…!
Every time my blood boils because Sue Hestor opposes a project, I have to remember all the wonderful things she has done for the property value of my condo. Thank you Sue!
I too am gay and the only emotion I’ve ever had for that block in 4 decades has been an intense desire to bulldoze it.
PS: Everybody knows what good taste we have and I approve of the design of the new building.
The buildings in question are derelict to say the least. Any city should be all about improving the quality of the environment for its citizens. The proposed use and the aesthetic improvement that this project would bring to life are reasons enough to approve it. As a member of SF’s LGBT community, there is nothing there that I can see as worth preserving. Let’s strive to make mid-Market a showplace instead of a zone of forgotten and neglected tenements.
Anywhere else this would be a no-brainer…. Just look at that part of Market Street. The introductory paragraph almost reads like satire. That’s how hip we’ve become in this town.
So some boy hookers stood on the block 50 years ago. BFD…..
Not to be confused with the female ones who occupy the area today.
So you are saying it’s currently a contextual resource for the straight community?
It’s a contextual resource for the sexual community?
It may not be pretty, but compared what’s there now it looks like the Taj Mahal. Build it now and save the fighting for somewhere else.
let me get this straight…(no pun intended)…the proposed development is on a site that was once popular for gay and transgender prostitution, therefore it must be forced to produce a full environmental impact report?
I bet this threat disappears as soon as Sue Hestor is hired by the developer as a “consultant”.
[Editor’s Note: Ms. Hestor has nothing to do with the appeal based on the LGBTQ history of the site.]
OMG. Another EIR? I’m 4 for 4 on this one. BUILD IT.
UPDATE: Modern Mid-Market Development Redesigned, Slated for Approval next week.