Organized Labor

Design concepts for San Francisco’s new $3 billion Transbay Transit Center and Tower were presented to the public Aug. 6 at a meeting of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) Board. Each proposal would feature a tower taller than the 853 foot Transamerica Pyramid – ranging from 1,200 feet to 1,375 feet and dominating the City’s skyline – and a new Transit Center linking local and regional public transit systems. The TJPA had chosen three design and development teams in February to compete for the contract to replace the aging Transbay terminal at First and Mission.

“We are immensely proud to be presenting these innovative visions for the future of transportation on our City,” said Mayor Gavin Newsom. “As the centerpiece of the Transbay Redevelopment Area and the focus of bus and rail transit for the region, the Transit Center will solidify San Francisco’s place as the leader in public transportation and sustainable, transportation-oriented development.”

San Mateo County Supervisor Jerry Hill, Chair of the TJPA, said, “This project is a real solution to traffic congestion in California cities, which is projected to be among the nation’s worst by 2025. The new Transit Center will reconnect the region and its transit systems, allowing easier access to convenient public transportation options, thereby encouraging people to get out of their cars and off our freeways.”

When completed, the Transit Center will provide transportation links to eight northern California counties and serve as a transportation hub connecting Caltrain, MUNI, AC Transit, Greyhound, SamTrans, Golden Gate Transit, and BART as well as a future High-Speed Rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

TJPA Executive Director Maria Ayerdi said that with an increasing urban population and projected increases in the California population of 8 – 10 million people by 2025 and in the U.S. population of 140 million over the next 50 years, it was necessary for cities to deal with challenges to their transportation systems and infrastructure. She said that the three Design and Development (D/D) teams were chosen because they had demonstrated an ability to be innovative and chart new territory, and had shown the capability to execute projects of similar complexity. The TJPA paired world-class architects with developers who had experience in the types of private-public partnerships the project will represent. Each D/D team touted their experience and their mix of disciplines and management ability.

According to the TJPA, the project will generate jobs totaling 8,000 person years from the construction of the Transit Center and Caltrain Downtown Rail Extension. Thousands of additional construction jobs will be created during construction of 3,400 new homes and new office and retail buildings in the Transbay Redevelopment Area – a 40 acre area of downtown – and long-term jobs will be created through the operation and maintenance of the Center.

The TJPA projects that by 2030, the City will have a total of 829,000 jobs – a 44 percent increase. The Transit Center is designed to provide the infrastructure necessary to support the growth in jobs and population in the Bay Area. Additional jobs in retail, hospitality, maintenance, and restaurants will be generated over the next 10 – 20 years by the development. The first phase of construction is scheduled to begin in 2008, and will include design and construction of the Transit Center building, the rail foundation, bus ramps, and bus storage facilities, and design of the underground rail level component of the Transit Center.

Jim Chappel, president of SPUR (San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association) called on the TJPA Board to “choose a team that will work for the long term.” Housing activist Ernestine White said preserving open space in the urban environment was important and that, “The priority shouldn’t be luxury condos; we need more affordable housing so the teachers, nurses and other workers can afford to live here. We need to focus on affordability.” Each design does include the mandatory 15 percent set aside for affordable or below market rate housing. The projected development of a new neighborhood in the Transbay Redevelopment Area with 3,400 new homes includes 35 percent, or 1,200, set aside as affordable housing. Using models of the new structure and a slide show and video-animation presentation, the three D/D teams made their case before the TJPA Board. An overflow crowd watched the proceedings on a large screen television in the City Hall North Light Court.

Presentations were made by the teams of architect Richard Rogers Partnership and developer Forest City Enterprises with MacFarlane Partners, architect Skidmore Owings and Merrill and developer Rockefeller Group Development Corporation, and Pelli Clarke Pelli architects and developer Hines. (A fourth team chosen in February, Santiago Calatrava and Boston Properties, recently dropped out of the competition.) The TJPA’s competition manager, Don Stastny of StastnyBrun Architects, Inc., introduced the teams, saying they each included “world-class firms with a world class understanding of excellence.” He said that for the jury evaluating the proposals, the competition was, “not just a beauty contest but a learning process to see how different developers look at a project. Each team will teach us lessons about the design with three different approaches.”