Organized Labor

The Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) Board on Feb. 15 approved four design and development teams to advance to the final stage of developing the new Transit Center and Tower to replace the aging Transbay Terminal at First and Mission. One of the teams of architects and developers will be chosen to design and develop the project after a final review of the proposals in August. The new Transbay Terminal is expected to cost about $3.14 billion.

TJPA Board Chair Nathaniel Ford said, "The Jury performed an extraordinary service in their thorough evaluation and analysis of the proposals. We are very pleased with their findings, and have confidence in this competition’s ability to determine the best possible team for this incredibly important project."

When completed, the Transit Center will 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.

The project also includes construction of three towers with a mix of residential, office, hotel and retail space. The tallest tower, at 1,000 feet, would be an 80-story mixed-use skyscraper 150 feet taller than the Transamerica Pyramid. Transit-Oriented Development will include a new neighborhood with 3,400 new homes, including 1,200 (35 percent) set aside as affordable housing.

The first phase of the construction is set to begin next year when a temporary terminal to serve passengers while the new Transit Center is under construction will be built. The new Transit Center and Transit Tower is scheduled to break ground in 2009 and be completed in 2014.

The TJPA Board approved the unanimous recommendation by the nine-member Jury to invite the four teams to participate in Stage II of the development and submit proposals. The jury is composed of professionals specializing in design, development and transportation.

The four finalists are Santiago Calatrava and Boston Properties, Skidmore Owings and Merrill and Rockefeller Group Development Corporation, Cesar Pelli (Pelli Clark Pelli) and Hines, and Sir Richard Rogers Partnership and Forest City Enterprises with MacFarlane Partners. Hundreds of interested architects and developers from around the world expressed interest in the design competition in December. Five teams were interviewed by the jury in January.

"We are excited to announce that one of these four teams will be selected to design the new landmark Transit Center and Tower," said Maria Ayerdi, TJPA’s Executive Director, who also served on the jury which picked the teams. "The strength and personal commitment of the Lead Designer and the overall composition and organization of the four recommended teams set them apart," she added. "This is a complex project and it is with pride and confidence that we select this list of world-class teams to participate in the final stage of the competition."

Ayerdi told Organized Labor that the TJPA and the four finalists would present their renderings and architectural schemes for the terminal and tower in early August at a public event at City Hall’s Light Court. By late August 2007, the Jury will select the best proposal and recommend that the Board approve the selection for exclusive negotiations with the TJPA for an Option Agreement for the Design and Development of the Transit Tower

San Francisco Chronicle Urban Design Writer John King wrote that each team pairs a major developer with a world-class architectural firm. "This says a lot about the cachet that San Francisco has nationally and internationally," the TJPA’s competition manager, Don Stastny of StastnyBrun Architects, Inc., told the Chronicle. "These are all heavy players."

The four finalist design and development teams:

• Architect Richard Rogers’ best known projects include the Centre Pompidou in Paris, London’s Millennium Dome and Lloyd’s of London. A British Lord who is also active politically as a member of England’s Labour Party, Rogers wrote the UK government’s white paper, "Towards an Urban Renaissance." He was also chosen as the architect of Tower 3 of the new World Trade Center to be built in New York City. Forest City is co-developer of Westfield San Francisco Centre and the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, and was chosen to develop the $4 billion, 22 acre Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.
• The San Francisco office of architects Skidmore Owings & Merrill is partnered with Rockefeller Group Development Corp. The architectural firm’s projects include San Francisco’s Bank of America Center and San Francisco International Airport’s international terminal. The Rockefeller Group is a commercial real estate corporation best known as developer of Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center. The company is owned by Japan’s Mitsubishi Estate Company.
• Boston Properties is a real estate investment trust with properties in Boston, Washington, D.C., Midtown Manhattan and San Francisco. It purchased San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center in 1999 for $1.23 billion. Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava is known for unique designs of bridges and train stations and is the designer of Barcelona’s Montjuic Communications Tower in the center of the 1992 Olympic site, as well as the Athens Olympic Sports Complex. He was also chosen to design a 2,000-foot-tall condominium tower set to begin construction in Chicago and a future World Trade Center Transportation Hub, a train station to be built at the World Trade Center site in New York City.
• Hines is the developer of 101 California in San Francisco. It’s portfolio of almost 900 properties—valued at $13.5 billion—includes skyscrapers, mixed-use centers, industrial parks, medical facilities, and master-planned resort and residential communities. Architect Cesar Pelli is best known for the design of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, once the world’s tallest building at 1,483 feet. Other designs include UC San Francisco’s Biology and Genetics Building and the Museum of Modern Art Tower in New York City.

The four finalists were chosen, according t the TJPA, because, "The Jury found that the Lead Designers of the recommended Desing/Development Teams demonstrated a dedication to design excellence and a personal commitment to the project, that the Development Entities demonstrated their understanding of the Transbay Transit Center Program and the capability to execute projects of similar complexity, and that the overall team structures were coherent and included the necessary mix of disciplines and management organization to design the Transit Center and Tower."

The TJPA is also promoting sustainable design goals as part of the Transit Center Project. Some of the design elements the TJPA wants included deal with water management, energy use, indoor environmental quality, natural ventilation, use of solar power, and natural lighting.

Thousands of construction job hours will be generated over the next ten to twenty years by the development, as well as new jobs in retail, hospitality, maintenance, and restaurants. The first phase of the project includes 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.