San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
For piers project, it’s all about waterfront recreation
When developers unveiled their vision for San Francisco’s Piers 30-32 in fall of 2020, the knock on the project was that it felt like more of a big office park with a little bit of waterfront recreation than it did a big waterfront park with a bit of office space.
Now the developers have come up with a new plan they think solves that problem. And this time it’s all about swimming.
The latest plan for Piers 3032, which developers Strada Investment Group and Trammell Crow presented to a port advisory group on Thursday night, represents a dramatic change for the project. Rather than rebuilding both piers 30 and 32 and sticking commercial space on top of the reconstructed pier sheds, the plan only calls for one of the piers to be rebuilt.
In place of the other pier, there will be an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a shallow pool for people learning to swim, a hot tub and showers, lockers and saunas and rentals for kayaks and stand-up paddleboards.
And along the Embarcadero, instead of glassy office lobbies, there will be a market hall with food kiosks, and artisan stands where makers can sell their goods. The project’s office space — about 350,000 square feet — will be concentrated on the single pier, which will be longer and wider than earlier plans.
Based on feedback from both neighbors and regulators, the development team “completely rethought the project,” said Jesse Blout, a founding partner with Strada.
“We opened up the swimming facility to be less surrounded by development, and instead open to the bay and views of the Bay Bridge,” said Blout. “It’s better situated from the standpoint of wind protection and sunlight and feels like much more of a public experience.”
Blout said the two state agencies that regulate the waterfront — the State Lands Commission and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission —
both objected to the way proposed office space dominated the piers in previous versions.
“A lot of the changes came in response to the feedback from regulators about making the Embarcadero feel less like you’re walking by a couple of office building lobbies,” said Blout. “So what we have done is really activate the Embarcadero.”
While the developers hope to draw bay swimmers with a roped-off area similar to the aquatic park near Crissy Field, they decided that the pools would be heated — most likely fresh water — rather than the frigid stuff pumped in from the bay.
“We’ve heard very quickly that if you really want to teach people to swim, who might be hesitant to get into water, the last thing you want to do is make it murky 55 degrees water where you can’t see the bottom of the pool,” said Blout.
While the developer has released new renderings of the piers, it will be another two months before it makes public the plan for Seawall Lot 330, the
port-owned property across the street. Blout said that the original plan for 850 housing units in two towers there would likely be scaled back to 725 units, about a 15% reduction. And instead of two bulky towers, there would likely be a single slender one along with midrise buildings.
If the project gets the needed approvals, it would be a major coup given the parade of doomed schemes for that area that have been floated in the past, only to be torpedoed by naysayers.
Just in the past two decades the Golden State Warriors’ plans for a new arena on the piers fell apart because of neighborhood opposition, forcing the team to build a mile south in Mission Bay. Talks with “Star Wars” director George Lucas to put his cultural museum there went nowhere. In 2000, the port picked a developer to build a cruise ship terminal, hotel and housing on part of the site, but the plans sank because of steep cost increases after years of bureaucratic delays.
The piers have sat vacant since the structures on them
were destroyed by a fire in 1984, but the city opened a 200-bed homeless shelter on the surface parking lot in 2019, which caused a neighborhood uproar and lawsuit.
Deputy Port Director David Beaupre said the current proposal is the best one he has seen. The rebuilt piers would offer a berth for cruise ships and military or emergency vessels. The developer would rebuild the seawall and add more than four feet to the height of the piers along that stretch, which will help protect against sea-level rise. That work alone will cost $400 million — money the port doesn’t have.
“Part of my job is to be an optimist, but of all the (proposals) I have seen come through, this one has the best balance of revenue-generating uses and maritime uses,” said Beaupre. “It delivers resilience for this part of the waterfront and has more public trust benefits than all the other ones.”
He said the ratio of commercial space to 5.2 acres of publicly accessible space — which includes the water around the
piers — would be about 28% to 72%.
“It’s a pretty strong ratio,” he said. “The Bay is a massive recreational amenity. But it’s only a recreational amenity if you can get into it or onto it.”
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who has led the fight against past efforts to redevelop the piers, said he has been pleased with the changes made so far. He said removing one of the piers was a smart move because it opens up plenty of possibilities in terms of creating a busy, bayoriented waterfront.
“I think the project continues to evolve in a positive way,” Peskin said.
Still, he said he didn’t know whether the proposal could get past regulators with the BCDC.
“I wouldn’t want to give you odds,” Peskin said “There are folks among the staff at BCDC who still question whether putting offices on state lands is even legal in this case.”