designbythebay.com » Urban Planning

BRIDGE Housing at 25

Sally B. Woodbridge — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:40:03 +0000

BRIDGE HOUSING: EARLY HISTORY

The BRIDGE Housing Corporation, a non-profit company considered by many to be the state’s foremost developer of affordable housing, has built more than 13,000 housing units since its founding in 1983. Although Bridge’s original focus was housing for working families, it has diversified and now has several affiliates and a staff of about 250, enabling it to handle every aspect of financing, planning, development and maintenance of the projects it owns and manages.

Although outreach to the community surrounding its projects has always been an integral part of BRIDGE’s approach to building housing in California, its scope has expanded to include the components of communities and to transforming existing neighborhoods.

This article focuses on the early history of BRIDGE, beginning with an account of its founding and its early projects, Holloway Terrace in 1985, and Parkview Commons in 1990. The recently completed Mission Walk development comprises two buildings on Berry Street in Mission Bay. The missing period of enormous expansion between 1990 and 2009 will doubtless be covered in the detail it deserves, but a blog post is not adequate for that task.

The impetus for starting BRIDGE in San Francisco, which remains its headquarters, was an anonymous gift of approximately $650,000 entrusted to the San Francisco Foundation in late 1980.

The funds were dedicated to creating affordable housing and came at a time when the Bay Area’s high costs of living threatened the stability of the workforce because its members were being priced out of the housing market.

The nine-page document that accompanied the gift contained the following statement:

“The donor has had and still has a strong interest in housing for persons and families of low and moderate income. However well intentioned, various federal programs, e.g., Section 8, have not delivered enough housing to either the inner cities or elsewhere to meet the enormous demand. This in turn suggests that what the private sector needs is a program for the construction or rehabilitation of housing for low and moderate income groups which would attract private investors interested in meeting a real national need and still make economic sense to investors and the business community.

Accordingly, this gift must be used to form a relatively small task force to study the problem, using all the academic disciplines from Bay Area universities at the faculty and graduate school level. Membership of the task force should also include enough experienced businessmen and bankers to avoid too heavy an academic orientation.”

The foundation asked Alan Stein, an investment banker, to chair the task force and select its members. Stein had come to San Francisco from New York City in 1971 to head the office of Goldman Sachs. In 1978 Governor Jerry Brown appointed him Secretary of Business and Transportation, which had ten departments, one of which was Housing and Community Development. Since the HCD department lacked a director at that time, Stein’s first task was to fill that position.

For advice in finding a new director Stein consulted Richard Bender, then dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. Bender recommended a faculty member, Don Terner, who was an ardent housing advocate and had worked successfully in affordable housing programs in New York.

In 1980 Terner was appointed director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development. He moved to Sacramento where he worked closely with Alan Stein and, according to Stein, educated him about the housing field by taking him to see projects throughout the state. Terner left the state government in 1981.

In 1982, to fulfill the donor’s stipulation that a task force be formed to administer the grant, Stein convened a group of people who were successful in various fields and interested in affordable housing. Rather than create another report, the task force chose to start building. The next step was to hire executives to run the operation.

Don Terner’s actions as Director of Housing and Community Development made him a leading candidate to head the organization. He had sponsored legislation which gave non-profit housing developers the first option to purchase surplus public lands and had also initiated legislation that included density bonuses that allowed selected developers to add up to 30% additional units to their projects, thus giving them extra units at no additional land costs.

Terner was hired to be the president of the new organization, which was then called Bay Area Regional Housing Investment and Development Group, later turned into the acronym, BRIDGE. A close associate and former student of his, Rick Holliday, was made vice president.

To raise the capital needed to start building units, Stein and Terner, supported by their board of directors, held fund-raising events for members of the business community. This use of the methods of private developers was a radical departure from the 1960s approach of community non-profit housing organizations which were oriented toward government funding and focused on individual projects.

A highly successful fund raising event in 1983 allowed the first project, Holloway Terrace, in San Francisco’s Ingleside Terrace to start; it was completed in 1985. According to Alan Stein, the success of this and other projects that followed came from diligent outreach to the projects’ neighborhoods, ownership of the projects and careful management, and the serious involvement of board members in the projects’ development.

The original task force members are Dick Bender, Gordon Chin, Ken Phillips, Tony Ramos, Alan Stein, Clark Wallace, Susanne Wilson, Gerson Bakar, Preston Butcher, Tom Flynn, Tony Frank, Dean Macris, Sunne McPeak, Ken Rosen, Mary Lee Widener. The picture on the right is of Alan Stein and Rick Holliday, 2009.

Mission Bay and San Francisco’s Future

Sally B. Woodbridge — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:45:03 +0000

A comparison of the following two views of Mission Bay makes it clear that the city depicted in the upper one–an engraving of San Francisco ca. 1860 that shows Mission Bay as the circular inlet in the middle distance–is no longer real to us. Yet the lower, ca. 2000 view is also certain to become unfamiliar as San Francisco continues its southward expansion.

Since southeastern San Francisco is changing dramatically, how will its transformation affect the city as a whole? Will people travel the same routes to the same destinations that made the city famous in the past? Or, will a new city center in Mission Bay turn the old familiar city into what we may call the “museum city.” This transformation will not rob the historic city of its charm and importance, but it may no longer have the dynamism that will characterize the new center.

When San Francisco is depicted in the public’s imagination, its important geographic centers are typically those that were established in the 19th century and remained dominant through the 20th century. They are: the financial district in the blocks around lower Market Street; the commercial areas focused on Union Square and in recent years extended to Mission Street; the hills named Nob, Russian, and Telegraph; and other well known residential neighborhoods: Pacific, and Presidio Heights, the streetcar suburbs such as the Mission and the Western Addition, and the Richmond and Sunset districts, automobile suburbs that began to spread across the city in the early 20th century.

In recent boom times real estate development for office space crossed Market Street, and a new cultural center coalesced south of Market in the 1990s in what is now called SOMA.

Both SOMA and the Central Waterfront district to the south have experienced more or less steady development of market-rate and affordable housing with related commercial activity. The completion of the baseball park in 2000 spurred growth and attracted attention further south to the Mission Bay area.

Yet, the idea of living and working in the barren southeastern flatlands so unlike the familiar and glamorous traditional city to the north did not appeal to most San Franciscans.

Cargo Way/Bay Trail Conceptual Design Study

RCCo — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:14:58 +0000

In 2006, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) coordinating with the Port of San Francisco (Port) received a grant by the Association of Bay Area Government (ABAG) to study improving a segment of the Bay Trail along Cargo Way in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood. These Agencies selected RCCo to lead a consulting team to envision the conceptual design and prepare a report documenting the design process. All parties involved collaborated to bring about discussion and design efforts with stakeholders and the community in Bayview Hunters Point.

In addition to addressing the overriding goal of making this industrial boulevard safe and attractive for pedestrians and cyclists while ensuring that it serves the City’s cargo freight transportation needs, RCCo also integrated these other opportunities in the design for transforming Cargo Way:

Improve a three-quarter mile strip of the regional Bay Trail and San Francisco’s Blue Greenway linking the Illinois Street Bridge to Heron’s Head Park.
Provide better access to existing open space at Heron’s Head Park and Islais Creek.
Create a continuous greenway from to Islais Creek to the India Basin Shoreline open spaces including Heron’s Head Park that takes advantage of the required landscaped setbacks that currently exist along Cargo Way on its south side.
Create an attractive entryway into Bayview Hunters Point, India Basin Industrial Park and the Port’s Pier 90 -96 and Backlands
Apply concepts for basic improvements such as street trees, curb ramps, etc. that are consistent with the new Better Streets Plan (BSP) for San Francisco.
Create a model of sustainable, green streetscape design in an industrial area that can guide the design of subsequent parts of the Bay Trail and Blue Greenway.
Design landscaping for the filtering and treatment of storm flows using Sustainable Stormwater Guidelines and Best Management Practices (BMP) established by the SFPUC.

Related Sites:

Greening the Port of San Francisco’s Backlands

Robin Chiang — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:56:11 +0000

In the mid-1990s, the Port of San Francisco’s planning and environmental staff collaborated to establish green guidelines for land use and development of the Port’s maritime facilities from Piers 80 to 98. One of the Port’s early moves was to turn Pier 98—bay fill that became a brownfields site—into Heron’s Head Park, a dedicated wetlands habitat. Owned and maintained by the Port, it provides a sanctuary for 78 different species of birds—and an ideal place to study the shoreline ecology of the south waterfront and how its flora and fauna have been impacted by industrial pollution.

The heart of this area is the Backlands, which takes in Piers 90 and 94. The majority of its 47 acres was undeveloped—as bay fill, it required foundations that were too costly for most industrial buildings. The development of Mission Bay forced the concrete and gravel suppliers located there to move to the Backlands. Norcal’s recycling plant was already in operation at Pier 96, close to barge and rail service. Bode’s and Hanson’s new concrete and gravel plants were required by the Port to be green by design and operation. Both plants also take advantage of service from barges and ships. Their open hard surface lots are paved in permeable concrete. Stormwater runoff is addressed by surrounding open areas and parking lots with bio-swales planted with reintroduced native plants.

Bode and Hanson have both made green part of their brands, installing large public displays of their sustainable building products. They jointly sponsored an ornamental garden on Third Street that helps form a green gateway to the Bayview. They also helped defray the cost of cleaning up a former dumping area at the end of Pier 94 to create another wetlands. New soil has encouraged native grasses and shrubs to grow, creating a home for local and migrating birds—a nature preserve in the making. Discarded tires and appliances, long buried by other debris, are removed as they continue to surface.

Green Synergy

The Port’s latest master plan for the Backlands’ 47 acres identifies potential tenants with both the means to build and operations that suit the green program. They are a bio-diesel processing plant and San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s wastewater treatment digesters. The oldest tenant in the Backlands is a tallow company. Due to clean air restrictions, it’s no longer allowed to process the grease it collects from local restaurants, so it’s been shipping the waste to Port of Stockton and from there across the Pacific to China. By locating a bio-diesel plant next door to the tallow company, the grease can be processed locally in a sealed system and then converted to bio-diesel fuel.

Greater synergy will also be realized by relocating the wastewater treatment digesters to the Backlands from their current site in a residential neighborhood half a mile away. The new treatment plant will be able to separate the organics and process them appropriately, either cooked directly into fertilizer or sent to the bio-diesel plant to be turned into fuel. The latter process will use the high concentrations of methane that are a byproduct of water treatment as fuel—another example of the Backland’s “virtuous cycle.”

What’s next for the Backlands? Logically enough, the Port hopes to attract sustainable industries, locating them adjacent to Cargo Way, creating a “green cluster” along the south waterfront. They envision improving public access on this road, which links Third Street to Heron’s Head Park, to integrate the adjoining Bayview district with the regional Bay Trail and San Francisco’s Blue Greenway. By reconnecting the city to the Bay in a way that signals a new attitude toward its ecological integrity, the Port’s efforts are as full of promise in their own way as the removal of the Embarcadero Freeway.

Glen Park Community Plan

RCCo — Sat, 17 May 2008 18:45:09 +0000

The Glen Park Community Plan is one of several planning efforts underway in the City’s transit-served neighborhoods. Glen Park with its BART station is a piece of the Citywide Action Plan to meet the need for housing and jobs.

The Glen Park Community Planning effort seeks to make Glen Park a better place to live and to help Glen Park function better for transit. The long-standing Interest in a neighborhood planning effort for Glen Park increased in response to the 1998 fire that destroyed the local grocery. After the fire, the Planning Department identified grant partners and was awarded a Caltrans grant in mid-2002. After many unavoidable delays, the community planning was started and has culminated in the plan to give the Glen Park community the tools it needs to guide future development in keeping with the neighborhood’s values.

Related Sites:

BART > Glen Park Station > News | Chronology
The official site for BART, Bay Area Rapid Transit.

The Glen Park Community Plan at the San Francisco Planning Department
This community planning process sought to provide the opportunity to balance community needs and address planning issues facing the neighborhood. Planners tackle circulation issues important to the community, including pedestrian safety, traffic flow, access to transit, and parking. Planners also evaluate ways to respect the neighborhood character through zoning, design guidelines, and other city policies. Public improvement opportunities like the use and design of buildings surrounding the BART station, the design and character of streets, and connecting public open spaces and neighborhoods were also explored.

Glan Park Station at Wikipedia
This is the only BART station in San Francisco to have parking.

Islais Creek

RCCo — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:50:34 +0000

Islais Creek is an inlet of San Francisco Bay located in the Central Waterfront between Potrero Hill and Bayview/Hunters Point. The area was once a vast salt marsh which when diked and drained contained small truck farms. In 1925 the State Legislature created a reclamation district to drain and develop the Islais Creek basin as an industrial area leaving only a small shipping channel.

World War II provided the impetus for the construction of factories and warehouses. During the War, the creek served as parking areas for large ocean-going tugs. Further up along the shore of the creek is located the largest copra coconut processing plant in the entire United States west coast region. In fact, the abandoned five-story high copra crane, shown in the picture above was used to transport large amount of copras from ships to the plant as late as 1974, is still standing on the creek bank today and is preserved as a historic landmark.

ILWU Local 10 longshoremen worked the pier, using picks and shovels to break up the large pieces of copra in the ships’ hulls. A large suction pump known as a blower then moved the copra pieces to the mill where ILWU Local 6 members processed it into oil. The remaining “copra meal” was pressed into pellets, put into 100 pound sacks and the warehousemen prepared it to be shipped across the bay to warehouses at Colgate-Palmolive-Peet and McKessin-Robbins. The crane was used to load the copra meal onto outbound ships.

By the 1970’s the businesses around the Creek had mostly closed and many buildings abandoned. Today the area contains several auto wrecking yards, underutilized warehouses and private and public bus storage yards. These facilities are situated right up to the edge of the Creek precluding public access to the water except in several small locations.

Presently, community organizations including the Friends of Islais Creek, established in 1984, have been working to improve the conditions of the creek and nearby areas.

The Copra Crane has been the subject of a campaign to save it as a monument to the old days of longshoring at the creek. Aerial dancers “re-purpose” the Copra Crane on Islais Creek for a unique dance performance in 1999.

Wikipedia > Islais Creek