Fireboats’ new station could be a floating pier
By 2021, one of the most visible piers on San Francisco’s Embarcadero could be a streamlined fire station clad in white metal panels and perched atop a permanently docked barge.
First, though, the team officially selected last week by the city’s Department of Public Works to construct the $30 million facility just south of busy Rincon Park at Pier 22½ will need to run its conceptual plans by a whopping 17 city, state and federal agencies — not because of the unusual concept, but because that’s how things are done in the Bay Area.
“There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny in how this relates to its surroundings. We understand that,” says Alan Kawasaki of Oakland’s Shah Kawasaki Architects.
Kawasaki’s firm is part of the design-build team that would replace San Francisco’s current fireboat pier, bare except for a wooden shed from 1987 that lacks living quarters, adequate
storage space and just about everything else. The team, led by Swinerton Builders and Power marine engineering, would also restore the landmarked 1915 fire station that’s nestled against the Embarcadero, a white stucco box with a red terra-cotta tiled roof where firefighters now sleep in cramped quarters above the fire truck.
It’s a fascinating project in large part because of the city’s desire to go with a floating structure, rather than a conventional pier — an approach prompted by concerns about the likelihood of sea-level change.
By 2070, for instance, the city’s accepted projections are that the average high tide here will climb roughly 18 inches. Add heavy storms and high winds and we could see waves surging nearly 4 feet above the level of the current pier.
And every scientifically accepted projection has those levels continuing to climb, decade after decade.
“Looking at what we’re faced with ... this feels like the right approach,” says Mohammed Nuru, director of the city’s Department of Public Works. “Sea-level rise is a real issue for the city. I strongly believe doing a barge anchored to piers will accommodate that.”
Agencies such as the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must sign off, though. The project technically would be on bay fill, since it would cover water that’s now open to the sky.
The conceptual plan also includes a small bay-ward extension of the Embarcadero to provide a public viewing area south of the pier. The 14,400-square-foot barge itself will be in a secured space off limits to passersby.
As if this wasn’t enough, the Embarcadero is a National Register Historic District as well as a perennial political hotbed. Every aspect of the design is sure to be second-guessed.
As an object unto itself, the look is contemporary and clean — the north and south sides of the 34-foot-high, 151-footlong tube-like structure will be clad in white panels slit by horizontal windows deployed asymmetrically to let light into active areas while screening off areas like the locker and laundry rooms. The end facing the city will include an overhang of red terracotta tubing that will do double duty: shading the interior while also providing the structure’s one hint of fire-engine red.
The simplicity is in keeping with old pier sheds, which tended to be utilitarian spaces behind the atmospheric facades facing the Embarcadero. But this is a free-floating object that would be on full view to strollers from the Ferry Building, and some people might see it as too stark.
Kawasaki has his response prepared.
“The jewels on display will be the fireboats,” three in all, he points out. “You don’t want architecture that tries to compete.”
That’s also the feeling of City Architect Edgar Lopez, whose office was advised by a design jury as it sorted through three competition proposals for the project.
“It’s elegant but understated, not trying to be the focal point,” Lopez says. “I’m confident we’re starting from a good point” in terms of the reviews to come.
If all goes well, approvals and permits should be in hand by spring 2019. The barge would be built in China and then shipped to Treasure Island, where the fire station would be assembled. Firefighters could be in their new work home the following summer — always on the ready and savoring some of the best views in town.
While we’re on the waterfront, the ambitious design competition to help the Bay Area prepare for sea-level rise is charging ahead.
By next week, advisers to the group Resilient by Design will have selected 10 multidisciplinary teams that will each be awarded $250,000 to study a specific location along the bay.
The teams will be announced shortly after Labor Day. As for the locations, nearly 100 have been nominated in an open call that ended Monday — that list won’t be culled until the design teams are on board.
“We’re looking for places representative of a wide range of challenges,” said Amanda Brown-Stevens, Resilient by Design’s managing director. “We’ve received some great submissions, cities and counties really thinking it through, all the way to people suggesting their backyards.” Place is a weekly column by John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron