© 2000 Tom Wetzel
Topics:
Braindead Growth
New Edge Downtown without Transit Support
Environmental Injustice
Displacing Artists and Blue-Collar Industry
A Daily Tsunami of Muscle Cars
Open Space: Gated Fortress or Public Plaza?
Approval Sparks Uproar
Bryant Square is a large (approximately 150,000 square feet) office project proposed for a former industrial site in a Mission district residential area (photo below). The target market for the office space is the rapidly growing multi-media/high-tech industry in San Francisco. When coupled with the other office and "live/work" or condo projects in the Mission, it adds to the forces of displacement (often termed "gentrification") -- driving out working class tenants, artists, and small neighborhood businesses.
The project is being proposed by Stein Kingsley Stein Investments (SKS) (partly financed by the late William Simon, Treasury secretary under Reagan). SKS is also rehabbing a nearby warehouse into an office building at 19th and Harrison Streets. SKS's headquarters are in the former Green Glen laundry building at 18th and Folsom -- another SKS office conversion project.
SKS is notorious for having been the biggest contributor to Mayor Willie Brown's re-election campaign (plopping down $100,000 in political juice).
The Bryant Square site also includes the former Pacific Felt Co. brick factory building, which was rehabbed into 35 live/work lofts (at prices up to $610,000), called "The Mill." In the photo below The Mill is the brick building at left, the three-story curtain wall building at right formerly housed a sweater factory (now evicted).
Dan Kingsley, the local principal in SKS, is a smooth-talking pro in the large-scale development game. Kingsley is trying to sell this project as an example of smart growth.
"Smart growth" is a slogan that refers to a strategy of infill development which has been devised to deal with the shortage of land for development, after more than a century of unfettered, market-driven sprawl in California.
The "smart growth" rubric is also a kind of spin the development industry is using to win support from environmentalists. According to the theory, smart growth means redevelopment of underutilized parcels within urban areas, to increase the density (either residential or employment density) around high-level transit services. The idea is to encourage people to rely less upon automobiles, and concentrate development in areas where adequate infrastructure already exists rather than continuing to expand into farmland on the edges of the metropolitan area.
For this densification strategy to work, both housing and job sites must be concentrated near good quality transit services and this must be housing the workforce can actually afford. The strategy will only work if workers in general can afford the housing and if high grade transit service is actually provided. Bryant Square meets neither of these conditions because it will contribute to the loss of affordable housing and has woefully inadequate transit service.
What we have in the northeast Mission is an emerging "edge city" (to use Joel Garreau's term) or edge downtown. In addition to the 150,000 square feet of Bryant Square Phase II, there have also been in the last several years numerous conversions of warehouses and factories to multi-media/high-tech offices, including: 2300 Harrison (a three-story structure rehabbed by SKS -- photo below), the Lili Ann building (a former garment factory) at 17th and Harrison (now owned by Robert Cort), and the massive Best Foods mayonnaise factory complex being converted to offices and lofts. Within a matter of a few years over 850,000 square feet of office space will have been added to this area (if Bryant Square Phase II is approved). This is work space for over 8,000 people.
SKS recently rehabbed this warehouse into offices at 2300 Harrison.
The northeast Mission simply does not have the kind of transit infrastructure needed to support the massive office center emerging here. The public transit service within a quarter mile of the project consists of four bus lines. Three of these are downtown-radial bus lines. The 27-Bryant and 12-Folsom are designed to get east Mission residents into downtown or South of Market. The 9-San Bruno on Potrero Avenue is essentially a stream of rolling sardine cans, packed to the roof, also downtown-oriented. The fourth bus line is the very infrequent 33 bus that provides crosstown service to the Castro and Haight neighborhoods.
The extent of current Muni plans for this locale consists of increasing the frequency of the 12-Folsom and severely overcrowded 9-San Bruno bus lines (two blocks away) but that's it. Compare this to Mission Bay -- another edge office development. In that case the city is spending $500 million to build a subway under 3rd Street to serve Mission Bay and the other new development in the 3rd Street corridor. Nothing comparable is planned for the east Mission.
To carry out the "smart growth" idea for the northeast Mission, there would need to be major transit services focused on this area, to bring workers from many other neighborhoods directly, without time-consuming and annoying transfers. No service of this magnitude now exists, nor is any such service contemplated by Muni.
A dedicated shuttle van to BART and Caltrain -- the developer's concession in response to community opposition -- is a pathetic drop in the bucket.
In reality the Bryant Square office complex is designed to rely largely on people driving their own cars to this site. This was admitted by the city planning department's environmental review, which estimated that more than two-thirds of the people working here would drive to this site. In reality this is an auto-centric suburban office park being injected into the midst of one of the city's most pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods.
The developer is proposing a huge, three-level parking structure. In addition to parking spaces provided for the neighboring "Mill" live/work loft development (a phase of Bryant Square already completed), 280 spaces will be devoted to the office complex. This huge auto sump is a clear indication of an auto-centered design. Large parking structures like this are a subsidy and inducement to private automobile use. The more offstreet parking provided at this location, the more people will drive here.
Another limitation of the smart growth smokescreen for this project is that it doesn't address the huge affordable housing crisis in San Francisco, which is being greatly exacerbated by the influx of capital into the Mission district. The developer's $1 million contribution to the affordable housing fund (required for a major development of this size) is a pathetic drop in the bucket when we consider current real estate prices in San Francisco.
Historically the Mission district has been a working class neighborhood -- the median family income was $27,000 in 1990 (one third lower than the city median). Only 22.4% of employed residents of the Mission in 1990 were professionals and managers, compared to about 35% in the city as a whole.
Already, high rents have led to problems of overcrowding as people double up to pay the rent. Others are forced to move out of the city altogether to find a place they can afford. At present three-fourths of the people living within a quarter mile of this project are renters -- these people are at risk of displacement.
While expensive condominium projects are being built on numerous sites in the Mission district (including Bryant Square's 35 loft condos), there is a projected shortfall of 56 percent in the needed affordable housing for the Bay Area -- the second worst affordable housing shortfall in the United States. (Only the Los Angeles area has a more severe affordable housing crisis.) City leaders typically justify allowing the developers to build a rash of expensive condominiums in a working class neighborhood, with the displacement pressures this brings, on the grounds that there is a serious shortage of housing.
The problem is, the housing being built is not affordable to working class residents but is aimed at an upscale market of professionals and managers. As a critical mass of these middle class residents develops, this creates a bandwagon effect, with new businesses catering to this population segment emerging (such as the candlelit restaurants and vintage furniture shops along Valencia Street), and more professional/managerial class people feel comfortable about moving into the area.
This influx in turn puts upward pressure on rents and real estate prices. Present tenants are often displaced through owner move-in evictions or evictions under the Ellis Act, which permits landlords to cease renting altogether. The Mission district residential stock includes a large number of duplex and triplex buildings that are ideal targets for Tenant In Common conversions, for example. Since people move periodically, the rapid run-up in rents also has a displacing effect, as rents surge past the level of affordability for many people.
Office projects like Bryant Square add to the displacement of the existing Mission district population. They do this by adding to the bidding war for scarce real estate and encouraging more highly paid high-tech professionals to bid for living space in the neighborhood.
(For my own ideas for ensuring an adequate supply of affordable housing, see Learning from Vienna.)
The existing site includes a three-story brick curtain wall building which housed a sweater factory (employing 20+ people, many of them Mission residents) and other small businesses -- these have been forced out. About three score artists occupied a contractor's shed (see photo below) on Bryant Street at 20th -- artists, animators, filmmakers. Most of these have also been forced out -- many now cannot find space in the outrageous rental market in S.F. at present.
Instead of a city economic development plan that looks at ways to develop a balanced mix of industries for the long-run, the city is rapidly committing its "rust belt" industrial areas, like the Northeast Mission, to a one-crop dot-com industrial monoculture.
One area where Dan Kingsley has displayed his prowess as a smooth operator is in the way he has selectively approached groups and individuals, made deals, and dropped a few bits of strategically placed cash to gain just enough support locally to weaken community opposition. Of course no collective community process was involved -- it was short-circuited. Many in the community view the SKS strategy as divide and conquer.
SKS has touted the fact that a 6,000 square foot building in the center of the project (in the middle of the block) will be devoted to community and arts uses. The upper floor is slated to be converted to artists studios, sold at below market rates. And the lower floor is to be rented to "Digital Mission" -- a group that does computer training for local young people. This will be rented at below market rate. However, this is only about 3% of the total Bryant Square project. Given the high rents at present for high-tech/multi-media office space (and the large profits SKS will rake in), this is simply a token gesture.
SKS purchased the one-block site for $5 million. The upgrades to the buildings have required an additional expenditure of $22 million. SKS got back $19.5 million of that investment in revenue from the sale of the luxury loft condos at 720 York. The proposed five-story office building is slated to cost $16 million. Knowledgeable commercial brokers estimate that SKS will be able to rent the office space for as much as $9 per square foot per month. This will generate revenues of more than $15 million per year. The underground parking structure is projected to generate another $1 million in annual revenues. This means that each year's revenues will be equal to the entire cost of the new office building.
To determine how many people would most likely be working at this site, the planning department's environmental review used the rule of thumb of 200 square feet per worker. But this is an outdated rule, given the tendency in the software/multimedia industry towards smaller square footage per worker, with the use of innovative modular builtin furniture techniques. Cubicle spaces as small as 8 by 8 feet (56 square feet) are common. A more likely estimate for the capacity of the Bryant Square office complex would be 800 to 1,000 people.
Given the poverty of transit access, this means hundreds of Beamers and SUVs muscling their way through the narrow streets of the Mission.
The Mission district is one of the most pedestrian-oriented places in California. This is reflected in census statistics. More than 61% of the employed residents of the Mission get to work by public transit, bicycling or walking. Less than one out of three drive to work.
The area is very compact and dense, with many structures packed shoulder-to-shoulder on 25-foot lots. The overall population density of the Mission is 30,000 people per square mile (25,000 per mile in the area right around Bryant Square). ( Population Density Map of San Francisco.) The high density supports a rich mix of local businesses, which are often located in traditional mixed-use buildings with apartments on upper floors. This compact, mixed-use environment, with short blocks and wide sidewalks, makes it easy for people to do a lot of things by walking. It's an ideal environment for someone who doesn't own an automobile. And, indeed, four out of ten households in the Mission district do not own a motor vehicle. The Mission is really an ideal urban design from an environmental point of view because it minimizes the amount of vehicle usage per person.
Injecting hundreds of additional automobiles daily into this pedestrian-oriented environment is highly destructive. This will:
The physical design of the Bryant Square project has the character of a gated high-tech fortress. This brings to San Francisco the sort of "fortified" urban design which has been notorious in the construction of the new downtown in Los Angeles (see the "Fortress L.A." chapter in Mike Davis's book City of Quartz).
As a large "Planned Unit Development", SKS is legally required to give something to the community in the form of "open space." SKS has touted the fact that it is providing this in the form of an interior mid-block courtyard. This courtyard, however, is narrow and will be shadowed much of the day by the five-story monolith next to it.
Nor does SKS have any plans for a groundfloor food service which would actually invite people to make use of this space. As it is, people are likely to use this space only as an entry, passing into or out of the building or the luxury lofts ("The Mill") that shares the courtyard.
More importantly, the courtyard will be gated, and the gates locked at dusk. In short, it is a privatized interior space that does nothing to invite public use.
SKS has justified this gated, fortified approach by appeal to middle-class hysteria, suggesting that locked gates are all that separate this courtyard from being overrun with crack dealers and prostitutes. This is an appeal to stereotypes about the Mission held by the affluent, and propagated by the daily newspapers.
Some blocks in the Mission have had eruptions of drug dealing at certain times in the past two decades, and prostitutes sell their product on certain streets in the Mission. But those activities have not occurred in this corner of the Mission. Moreover, these activities may have been good sources of newspaper copy, but the actual harm to people has not been so severe as to justify turning the city into a series of gated enclaves.
Developers have been moving towards this fortress approach to infill development in older city areas as part of a strategy of gentrification -- the purpose is to make professional/managerial class people feel safer in a working class neighborhood they don't understand but fear. When we make their logic explicit in this way, the anti-democratic, exclusionary nature of their design becomes a bit clearer.
As an alternative, the community has proposed open space that is truly public space -- a plaza or mini-park on the corner of 20th and Bryant Streets, perhaps 1,000 to 2,000 square feet (see rough sketch below). This would provide a benefit that would genuinely be shared with the community, and provide an inviting entry that draws people in from the surrounding pedestrian-oriented environment.
The proposed plaza also would be an ideal site for a groundfloor eatery such as a sidewalk cafe that spills out onto the plaza. This would provide not only an additional lunch option for workers in the complex, but also a place where local residents and building users could co-mingle.
SKS's design of the Bryant Square complex as a gated high-tech fortress reflects the attitude of SKS towards the Mission -- as a terrain targeted for conquest.
After the Planning Commission rubber-stamped this project in May, neighborhood residents began collecting signatures of property owners around the project for an appeal to the Board of Supervisors. The rules for this type of appeal are almost feudal in character. Even though projects have an impact on the lives of tenants, only property owners count in an appeal. And each property owner does not have one vote -- your vote is equal to the size of the terrain you own.
Most properties in this area are owned by people who live or have businesses in the area. Opposition to this project was so widespread that we had no trouble securing the signatures of owners of about half the terrain around the project to appeal the approval to the Board of Supervisors.
Normally when property owners appeal a controversial decision of the Planning Commission, the vote by the Board of Supervisors is delayed to allow time for the developer and opponents to negotiate a compromise. A recent proposal for a hotel on Lombard Street, which was eventually voted down by the supervisors, was delayed for this purpose. At the last minute, however, we learned that SKS had lobbied a majority of the Board of Supervisors to refuse a delay. This gave us only two days to organize Mission residents to protest.
Despite the short notice, over a hundred residents of the Mission turned out on a weekday afternoon to register their impassioned opposition at the Board of Supervisors hearing on the project on June 26th, and more than 60 of them -- a cross-section of a diverse neighborhood -- spoke.
Speakers in favor of the project were mainly business partners of the developer or people in the development industry (lots of guys in suits). One supporter of the project noted that 25% of the people who work in the "IT" (Internet technology) sector (the target market) do not have college degrees. Let's turn that around. This implies that 75% do have college degrees. By comparison, at the time of the 1990 census only 34% of S.F. employed residents had college degrees. This is close to the proportion of professionals and managers living in S.F. in 1990.
So, this tells us that the proportion of professionals and managers in the target market for the office space is more than twice as great as the city average in 1990. This build up of a high concentration of highly salaried people contributes to displacement.
SKS had clearly been effective in its lobbying. The supervisors had made up their minds, voting 8 to 3 to approve the project. The neighborhood had its opportunity to express its outrage two days later, at a Mission community speakout organized by the Mission Antidisplacement Coalition. Over 500 Mission residents attended the spirited assembly to confront the city's planning director and two of the members of the planning commission, in the largest community meeting of its kind in the Mission in two decades. The expressive crowd made clear their backing for the Coalition's demands for a halt on office and luxury condo projects in the Mission -- the capitalist steamroller that is driving out working class tenants, artists and arts groups, and evicting businesses where people work.
For a report on the Mission community meeting of June 28th, see Ryan Kim's article in the Examiner.
Back to Transit and City Design
