1960-1998 Market: Revised Design

Unanimously approved by the Planning Commission back in 2009, the plans for 115 condos to rise in an Arquitectonica designed development at 1998 Market Street have been dusted off and permits pulled with construction expected to begin within 30 days.

1960-1998 Marke Street: Revised Design

Construction is slated to last for 18 months with the affordable housing (BMR) component for the project built offsite in a 24-unit project at 1600 Market Street, the Stanley Saitowitz design for which won’t be rising, Forum Design has been tapped for that project instead.

The 1960-1998 Market Street Scoop: Unanimously Approved Design [SocketSite]
Condos struck by Magic [San Francisco Business Times]
Entitled, Envisioned And For Sale (But Not Permitted): 1600 Market [SocketSite]
1600 Market: Envisioned Mixed-Use Redux (And Slight Reduction) [SocketSite]

37 thoughts on “Arquitectonica Designed 1998 Market Street Ready To Break Ground”
  1. Yes! Pleasantly amazed the design survived planning and neighborhood review, wish they would have kept the Saitowitz design for 1600 as well.

  2. This project has been on my mind and I am very glad it will be rising so soon- 18 months sounds like a very optimistic timeframe, though, considering the smog station there would have to be demolished. Have the underground storage tanks been removed from the gas station?

  3. The corner’s the best part.
    Bummer about 1600, although if the #8 Octavia project moves ahead, that will be enough Saitowitz for the neighborhood.

  4. Good looking design but I’ll eat my hat if anyone ever sits at those umbrella’d tables on that corner 🙂

  5. Yup, Duboce drivers slow down almost to a stop to make the sharp turn into Buchanan and do really push on their gas pedal to gain speed to make the slope. No place to sip your espresso or enjoy the south facing sidewalk cafe!
    I hope these windows are sound proof.
    To pile on the negative vibe, the recycling center just across Buchanan really reeks of bad vinegar. Plus you’ll have first row ticket for the show of the transients patronizing this center waiting in line for hours. Last you have the Wiggle crowd which knows little rules.

  6. Ha! Coincidentally by brother worked on the project to stabilize that pile of mud last year.

  7. With the project across the street at the old Ford dealership planned to start soon, this promises to bring a lot of housing and urban energy to this part of Market St.
    Things are looking up.:)

  8. I see no problem with BMR’s being provided off site. That’s the current legislation, as far as I know.

  9. The recycling centers are essentially doomed, at least in their current state. It is taking a while to get rid of them or replace them because of the usual statist politics of the City, but the original intent of those facilities has not been served for a very long time.

  10. If the original intent was for people to go and deliver their own cans/bottles, then yes indeed it was not fulfilled.
    But seeing the number of people picking through private trash once a week or each and every trash can in this city all day every day, I can tell you very few bottles seep through this very efficient net.
    Collecting a buck or two a week by the citizenry wasn’t a good incentive enough, but the collection is getting done another way.

  11. And I’ll add it will be very difficult to stop the program, simply because so many rely on the money. You get a room in an SRO thru care-not-cash, then you collect cans to pay for food/booze/whatever. Stop this and see people finding less socially acceptable ways to get cash.

  12. I’d like to see that recycling corner simply turned into some green space/ part of the bike-way.
    Nothing against the recycling, it’s just in the wrong location, does nothing to enhance that part of Market St. , and is noisy. Relocate it to a part of SF not on our central urban street.

  13. Love the sarcasm about relocating it to Noe Valley. Ok, I get your humor.
    Fact is, this recycling center is not in the appropriate location: Noise, trash, unattractive, pedestrian unfriendly. And no, I’m not putting down anyone who uses it or benefits from it.
    Yes, it’s an odd triangle of land, but could be put to better public use than a recycling center. That’s why we have zoning districts. An auto dismantling shop or a cement plant would probably not be appropriate their either.
    At the intersection of two of our greatest streets, Dolores and Market: I think we could better from an urban design point of view than a recycling center. How about some landscaping, trees, plaza, at best?
    Where it should go? I have no idea right now, but I’ll do some thinking about it.

  14. Recycling centers are a 1960s idea that have outlived their time. Today every resident and every business gets recycling containers to put out on the street. We have this crazy system where bums are encouraged to steal the recyclables and sell them back to the scavenger company who already owns them. What is wrong with this picture? Is there nothing useful we could pay the “homeless” to do?

  15. Excellent comment Jim! You said exactly what I was thinking. Thank you.
    We have “bums” and some homeless with their damn Safeway shopping carts patrolling streets at nite here in Noe, once the blue containers are put out before trash pickup. I have told them on several occasions to keep out of my trash, only to be verbally assaulted.
    Maybe if we eliminate these outdated 1960’s recycling centers, it would be a small step in cleaning up our homeless problem.

  16. futurist,
    if the homeless cannot collect redeemable stuff, then they will look for another source of cash. Of course you could believe that the homeless will disappear with a brush of a hand like that. Oh, and unicorns shooting rainbows from their backside should be put in their place too.
    Nope. The homeless problem is systemic. If you house, feed and clothe them they will come. But recyclables? It’s an effect, not a cause.

  17. The economic argument I’ve heard regarding bums taking the high-value recyclables from residences is that the pickup companies (and I’m talking in the Bay Area in general here) count on the revenue generated by a certain level of collected items that have a CRV value (which is what the chronic homeless men – futurist’s “bums” – make a point of collecting because that’s what they can get money for in order to finance their addiction(s)) in order to subsidize the collecting of low-value recyclables like cardboard items and paper (“junk mail”) advertising material.
    If the chronic homeless men are systematically reducing the level of high-value recyclable items in the collected waste stream from residences, then the companies will have to charge (more) for the collection in order to make up for the lost revenue. Wanting to avoid paying higher residential recycling pickup charges in the future is a valid reason to want to discourage your curbside container from being cherry-picked by the chronic homeless.

  18. Nope. Not up in arms at all. But I’ll tell you, a number of my neighbors on my street don’t really appreciate having homeless/bums pawing thru our recycle bins at 2 am; some of these guys knock over the entire blue bin scattering trash down the street. Two of these guys recently, both young, Hispanic males were VERY angry that I caught them getting into my recycle bin. They were aggressively angry at me. Guess what? they got caught.
    Who likes having trash spilled on the street? And No, I didn’t say the homeless would disappear with the “brush of a hand”. You might want to re-read what Jim said> I was just quoting his use of the word “bums”. And I agreed with what he said.
    What has happened in this wonderfully “tolerant” city is that the homeless/bums have found a way to make acceptable their homelessness and street living and (sometimes) continual drug and alcohol addictions by pretending to make a living by stealing trash from recycling bins only to re-sell it. Nice scam.
    Now, to the more important issue: Get rid of that recycling dump at Market and Buchanan and develop it into a nice public space.
    Now I can hardly wait for all the pitchforks and torches to arrive!

  19. Brahma,
    Good luck with curbing this activity. I lived on a very steep hill 3 years ago and at least 4 people combed through my trash. Now that I live on a more flat street, it’s probably 6-8 or more. Trash cans should be fitted with a mechanical device (magnet?) that would allow them to be only open by the collectors once the homeowner has closed them. And a thin opening through which a hand cannot reach in but that can be used for last minute stuff. There’s a niche market there for a crafty inventor.

  20. I’ve recently install 3 web cams hooked up to my laptop so I can watch my recycling bin when it’s out there.
    Plus I installed a secret trap door in the sidewalk right near the bin.
    That should stop ’em.

  21. Oh, I agree with you that its pretty much useless to try to devise measures that will curb this kind of thing. I was just saying that it’s not entirely unreasonable to be upset at this practice as a homeowner, even if you don’t live in a tony neighborhood.
    I’ve actually talked to a few different people who’ve slept in the outer doorway of my building from time to time (when they’re lucid or more sober than usual) and the thing that’s obvious is that the chronic homeless operate with the impunity that futurist describes above (“only to be verbally assaulted”, “they were aggressively angry at me”) because they’re already living on the street and so don’t have anything to lose. This is over and above the obliviousness that comes with being an addict, if applicable.
    Of course, there’s no single coherent population of homeless that all have the same characteristics, even when you limit your discussion to chronic homeless people who collect recyclables.
    Let’s suppose that San Franciscans weren’t so “tolerant”. If you call the police, what are they going to do to a homeless person for “pawing thru recycle bins” or “knocking over the bin, scattering trash down the street”? Write them a citation? Are the cops going to arrive before the person leaves? Is the homeless person going to actually pay the fine, and if they actually had to spend a night in jail, wouldn’t that imply three free meals and a clean, warm place to live for a while? Wouldn’t that be an improvement for a lot of them? Beat cops know the answers to these questions.
    I also agree with you that a secure recycling container is a great idea; you’d have to retrofit the trucks to deal with auto-unlocking the containers, but at a one-time cost per truck the recycling company would recoup that capital expenditure pretty quickly, it seems to me.

  22. Yea, Brahma: well said. There isn’t much we can really do to stop the pilfering of our recycling bins late in the night.
    And no (everyone) it’s not a world crisis. Just an irritation.
    Now I just put my blue bin out as soon as I hear the truck coming down the street.

  23. for a short time i rented a studio in a building on Hermann Street right behind this lot, and moved out when this construction was originally supposed to begin (though not for that reason). loved the apartment, location, and my south-facing view toward Market, but being on a lower floor, i knew this building would eventually rise and box me in. just the other day i noticed the Zipcar parking was gone from that smog station parking lot, so i figured construction was starting soon. still nostalgic for my first and only SF nest, but glad i got out before the jackhammers and bulldozers arrived. i’ll also miss that mural on the retaining wall facing market. hopefully the end result will be as handsome as what’s depicted in these renderings.

  24. It is not only the homeless that use the recycling centers. We don’t put our CRV items into the blue bin put instead save them up and my partner turns them in every now and again on his day off. We also save up our redeemables from our place up in the mountains and add them to the pile. Then the recycling proceeds get combined with the change run through the coinstar machine and turned into Starbucks cards.

  25. Above, on April 17th 2012 10:23 AM, I wrote:

    The economic argument I’ve heard regarding bums taking the high-value recyclables from residences is that the pickup companies…count on the revenue generated by a certain level of collected items that have a CRV value…in order to subsidize the collecting of low-value recyclables like cardboard items and paper (“junk mail”) advertising material.

    Just wanted to follow-up, based on what I read today.
    From the Chronicle Watch column today, Recycling bins are targets for thieves:

    Each week in San Francisco…residents dutifully separate aluminium [sic] cans, glass bottles and plastic jugs from their garbage and roll their recycling bins to the curb on trash day.

    But before the garbage trucks even arrive, many bins are picked clean by people who take the bottles and cans to a recycling center — or a wholesale, black-market collector on the corner — and turn the trash into cash.

    The practice is illegal and inflates garbage-collection rates. The thieves often leave behind a mess on city sidewalks.

    …”It is certainly an issue of note,” Adam Alberti, spokesman for San Francisco trash collector Recology, told Chronicle Watch. “It is probably one of the top complaints the company gets from its ratepayers.”

    Alberti said recycling robbers cost residents money, because the thieves — not the garbage company — get the state reimbursement for the bottles and cans.

    “It is a nuisance factor since it is always done in the middle of the night, there’s a security factor since people put bills in the recycle bin, and there is actually a monetary factor,” Alberti said. “This is a direct loss to ratepayers. They have to subsidize what we are not getting from the recycling.”

    Emphasis added to relate the quote from the article to my comment earlier in this thread.
    The piece goes on to say that although police acknowledge that an actual crime is being committed and that recycling rip-offs are annoying, “chasing down the thieves is not a high priority.” The author still ends with Chief Suhr’s phone number and email address, like having that information will somehow make the reader feel better.

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