Organized Labor

In the nightmares of some San Franciscans someone in a hard hat whispers, “Build on the Northeast Waterfront,” and an army of Fontana Apartment buildings claw their way up from the magma beneath us and stand all along the Embarcadero between the City and the Bay like massive robots spewing oil and destruction, while the populace flees in terror, maybe to Tracy.

Believe it or not, I don’t think anyone in the Building Trades wants any such thing. What’s more, I’m sure we can discuss the Northeast Waterfront without calling forth that army.

Watch, I’ll show you: Build on the Northeast Waterfront.”

See? No monster robots.

At a community meeting held recently by the Planning Department on behalf of the Port Commission to seek ideas on the Northeast Waterfront, Tom Radulovich, Executive Director of Livable City, presented a lucid vision of the neighborhood’s future. I approached him afterwards and told him that I thought his ideas were the best I had heard at the meeting and that I had been tempted to speak in support except that – to phrase it in terms of this column – the Telegraph Hill and Golden Gateway residents present would have heard not my words, but the clanking of robots. Mr. Radulovich responded by emailing me a letter he had sent last year to then-Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin.

In that letter Mr. Radulovich detailed his ideas for the Northeast Waterfront and Fisherman’s Wharf and recommended certain changes in the Planning Code to help implement them. Some of the ideas included:

Requiring active pedestrian-oriented ground-floor uses, such as residential entries or storefronts;

Requiring storefronts on streets with heavy pedestrian traffic;

Requiring tall ground floors to enable successful retail uses, and bumping up building height limits slightly to accommodate the taller ground floors;

Eliminating residential density limits and encouraging or requiring a mix of unit sizes;

Hiding parking, eliminating minimum requirements for parking in new buildings, and limiting driveways and garage doors on streets important to walking, bicycling, and public transit;

Improving public transit and conditions for pedestrians and bicyclists along the Embarcadero and assessing developers a fee to accomplish this;

Turning “paper streets” and parts of underutilized streets into public plazas and gardens.

None of this should be a problem for us in the Trades. On the contrary, the proposals at the same time reflect what is necessary for the future success and the only possible growth of a densely built city and provide us with various opportunities for work. We might hope that the proposals would find some acceptance also from nearby residents, because they do in fact address some of their concerns, albeit perhaps in ways they haven’t themselves imagined.

For example, residents near and on the Northeast Waterfront have contended that the neighborhood has too little open space. While I question this contention, let us accept it for the sake of this discussion. The residents have said that the Port’s “seawall lots,” the parcels separated now from the piers by the Embarcadero and used now for surface parking, should become public open space. If by this the residents mean simply parks, then they are asking for something that lives only by day. The playground in my own neighborhood, a prize by day, has all too often in my twenty-three years there been by night a source of gunshots and screams. The playground in my prior neighborhood, filled with children by day, was the nocturnal haunt of junkies.

An antidote to this in open space for the Northeast Waterfront would be to treat it more as plaza than as park, to give it reason to live in the evenings with small events and with small merchants, and to border it with small businesses that would spill light and voices onto it, with shops and cafes that would send laughter, music, and the sounds of dining along its paths. Those small businesses are lacking now on that side of the Embarcadero. If we take advantage of the seawall lots to provide the buildings that will house those small businesses and gain open space instead from the “streets,” we are far better off than if we simply plant lawns and shrubs.

The emphasis on walkers, bicyclists, and public transit and away from the automobile also benefits from a multiplication of businesses accessible without driving.

Once we have decided on this approach to open space, then the desirability of those small businesses asks also the taller floors of Mr. Radulovich’s proposal. The taller floors then mean that a four-story building, not at all out of scale in that part of the City, rises to as high as forty-five feet. Those five extra feet above some current height limits will block no one’s view. From those five extra feet no cold electronic eyes of destroyer robots will be fixed on Telegraph Hill.

Mr. Radulovich also considers height limits of fifty-five feet. Close in to Telegraph Hill, these are unlikely to be accepted by the folks perched in their homes above. Although Mr. Radulovich doesn’t say it and might even disagree, heights should rise gradually to the south, so that by Washington Street, close to the Golden Gateway complex and the Embarcadero Centers, the eighty-odd foot height proposed for the 8 Washington project would be appropriate.

So consider this possibility: Build on the seawall lots of the Northeast Waterfront. Insist on tall ground floors all along and storefronts galore. Take street space back from the car and give it to pedestrians in the liveliest, loveliest way available. Build at forty-five feet near Telegraph Hill. Build 8 Washington as proposed. We can debate how high we go at Broadway, but fifty-five feet might work.

See? Still no monster robots.