435-437%20Potrero.gif
Opposed by neighbors, San Francisco’s Planning Department has cleared the way for the two-story building at 435-437 Potrero Avenue to return to use as an Internet Services Exchange (ISE) with no planned changes to the exterior of the building for the foreseeable future except for some additional screening for the existing rooftop mechanical equipment.
Having been used as an ISE from 2000 to 2010 without any formal complaints from
the community, an appeal of the proposed use based on noise and pollution from facility generators was rejected by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors last month.

8 thoughts on “Neighbors’ Opposition To ISE On Potrero Avenue Iced By Supes”
  1. The neighbors complained about the air pollution from the diesel generator (to be run during power outages and for testing) and noise from the rooftop fans.
    I’m not involved in this building, but I have operated at several of the small data centers scattered around San Francisco. I wouldn’t want to live next to one because of the constant fan noise, but a half block away or so wouldn’t be bad.
    According to the building owners: “The building is served by PG&E with a 1.0 mega volt ampere (“MVA”) dedicated underground feed transformer that is located inside the building. This translates into a serviced capacity of approximately 800kW of power per hour. Using a vacancy factor estimate of 7.5 percent, the projected maximum annual energy use is 6,500,000 KWh per year, or 540,000kWh per month.”

  2. The neighbours are missing an opportunity. How can the community harness the heat generated by the routers and switches in the ISE for the winter months?

  3. It’s not practical to distribute the waste heat to the neighbors given the building’s existing cooling system.
    It would be fairly easy and cheap to distribute high bandwidth internet connections (100+ mbps) via wifi to neighbors with line-of-sight to the roof.

  4. Seems like this neighborhood is trying to vie with Telegraph Hill for having the most vexing and pointless NIMBYs. They opposed bicycle lanes, then they opposed turning a parking lot into housing, now this.

  5. Why can’t the tenant install noise abatement measures? Its not “NIMBY” to not want to live next to something like 24/7 high-intensity exhaust fan noise.
    Noise pollution in this city, especially in our mixed use neighborhoods is a real problem and growing — only because the city is too sloppily run to properly manage it with mature, proper mitigation.
    Snarky comments from t-baggers and zealots is just lazy trolling. Proper management of a dense city takes actual brains and effort.
    I’m told the Whole Foods at Market and Dolores is a loud mess out the back side (facing residential you may recall). RThis city needs to do a better job with noise pollution. Period.

  6. I love people who aren’t from here using tbagger and zealot as armor. Relax you might live here now but you aren’t born here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *