The case against 8 Washington - Page 4

Why an enclave for the rich is a bad move for San Francisco's waterfront

03.06.12 - 6:19 pm | Tim Redmond |

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Wow! Look at all the rich white people enjoying their gated community!

There's another element here: Mayor Lee made a point during his campaign to say over and over again that he was an independent thinker, that powerful and influential allies like Rose Pak would not be calling the shots at City Hall. This will be his first major test: Pak and lobbyist Marcia Smolens are working hard to promote 8 Washington. And we're already getting some disturbing signals out of the mayor's office.

Lee told us that he has "no thoughts" about the project and hasn't been paying any attention to it. That's an odd stance, considering that his own Port Commission is pushing it and staffers in his office are working with the developer. This is a big priority for Pak, and the notion that she has never mentioned it to the mayor defies reason. Board President David Chiu, who talks to the mayor regularly, opposes the project, which is in Chiu's district.

It's hard to imagine that anyone who pays attention to local politics could be missing what will be one of the landmark votes this spring on the Planning Commission — which will take up the project March 8 — and the Board of Supervisors.

The mayor, may, indeed, be ignoring everything that supporters and opponents of 8 Washington have said and may be waiting until the Planning Commission vote to take a position. But if he's just ducking questions because he's planning to support it, he's making a big mistake.

This is a chance for San Francisco to go beyond the platitudes about building housing, go beyond the hype about "green" buildings, see through the fraud about community benefits and consider what this really is: A special favor for a developer who wants to cater to the top 1 percent of the 1 percent and move San Francisco even closer to being a city of, by, and for the elite. The only reasonable vote on 8 Washington is No.

Comments

Here is something to chew on,

Here is something to chew on, you will have rich people moving to SF. You will always have rich people coming here, let them buy here instead of other places, you will have 134 units of upper income places, let the 1 percent live here, instead of the Mission, the Castro or the Fillmore. The rich people will find ways to take over places in the city, just think about South of Market becoming becoming another Cow Hollow.

Posted by garrett on Mar. 07, 2012 @ 11:16 am

Apparently, "diversity" doesn't include those who are

rich and white.

Posted by Guest on Mar. 07, 2012 @ 12:08 pm

"Diversity" doesn't include

"Diversity" doesn't include "white males" (rich OR poor)...

Posted by Guest on Mar. 07, 2012 @ 1:32 pm

So diversity is racist then, Guest?

That's an interesting perspective.

Posted by Guest on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 7:57 am

the diversity buzz word

means

people of all races that agree with progressives

Posted by Guest on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 8:10 am

The people of means who want

The people of means who want to live in San Francisco will do so. If they're not moving into a pricey new condo, they're going to move into the next best thing they can get. This slides all the way down the housing scale. People are getting priced out of normal San Francisco rental housing in neighborhoods like the Mission, the Castro, etc., because the demand for units for "the white and rich" is way higher than supply. You can either zone as much of San Francisco as possible into affordable housing and let the rest of the market get inflated to the prices only the ultra rich can afford, or you can allow more developments to fill this demand in order to maintain the more desirable spectrum of housing availability across the city.

This isn't about values. It's thinking rationally about our city's economic (the balance of incentives, costs, demand, supply) reality.

Posted by Guest on Mar. 07, 2012 @ 1:25 pm

An intelligent post, I'm kind

An intelligent post, I'm kind of surprised.

Posted by Guest on May. 09, 2012 @ 5:57 pm

Bay Guardian Retirement Community

Wow. A few corporate jet trips is the best you can come up with? Like your arguments, you guys are getting old. Maybe it is time to retire to a gated community of your own....

Posted by Guest on Mar. 07, 2012 @ 1:29 pm

Gated community

I don't think they have gated communities for old hippie commie radical types, even though I did cut my ponytail. And I won't live anyplace that doesn't have Bud Light for lunch. So I think it's the trailer park for me.

You missed the point, though: These units will not be marketed for people who were going to move here anyway. These are second and third homes for the elite. They aren't going to move to the Mission or the Castro, ever. No competition there. It's an entirely different market.

Posted by tim on Mar. 07, 2012 @ 4:44 pm

What does it matter if they are out-of-towners?

We were all out-of-towners once. Or most of us anyway.

Aren't you really just trying to meddle in what type of people can own homes here? If so, why?

Posted by Guest on Mar. 07, 2012 @ 5:06 pm

Rich, white people? Is that now like being a Nazi or some other

type of pariah? I guess I missed the memo.

Why do you always have to play the race card and the class card? Is identity politics that crucial for you?

Posted by Guest on Mar. 07, 2012 @ 5:12 pm

"If five of the 165 residents

"If five of the 165 residents of 8 Washington fly in a private or corporate jet from, say, New York to their SF pad once a month, the project will cause the use of jet fuel equivalent to what a normal family would use driving a car for 330 years, Paul noted."

Why don't you just make up some more stats that can't ever be proven?
If ten of the 165 residents of 8 Washington are werewolves, feeding say ten times a month, the project will cause the loss of silver bullets to the community requiring more silver mines in the amazon.

I mean honestly, can you come up with something intelligent? Something besides all white people are evil? How many people of color are on the sfbg payroll?

Posted by Greg on Mar. 07, 2012 @ 8:19 pm

that's not architecture, thats a federal bank....

look at the mundane treatment of the buildings, the lack of inventiveness

its straight out of a developer/bank project......

whats needed there is essential housing, not million dollar pied-a-terres.......

Posted by Guest on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 10:09 am

All housing is essential for someone but at least

these condo's will not cost the taxpayer anything in subsidies and, indeed, will provide tax revenues and affordable units.

You might want to build an SRO on the waterfront but, luckily, you'd never get funding for it.

Posted by Guest on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 10:13 am

Dirty politics

Wow BG is stooping very low. The rendering is old. Where's the new design as posted by planning. Hypocrites complaining that the new condo would upstate their own million dollar condos at the commons.

Posted by Guest on Mar. 15, 2012 @ 6:23 am

Uh yeah guest, the picture

Uh yeah guest, the picture above is not a rendering of the proposed project - its something that the author pulled off the internet because it represents his fantasy about the 8 washington project

Posted by Vibral on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 10:19 am

Wait, I'm confused... so the

Wait, I'm confused... so the developer wants to demolish private tennis courts and a parking lot, not homes, to build 134 condos for rich people, and in exchange is going to shell out cash for the city to ALSO build 27 units of affordable workforce housing. And somehow this is bad for affordable housing?

The alternative isn't "build affordable housing instead" because no one has the money. The alternative is "build no market rate or affordable housing at all, and hope those 134 rich people just disappear instead of buying houses in gentrifying areas of the city and pricing others out."

Posted by Rick on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 11:09 am

Let them eat cake.

The progressive intelligentsia agrees. This is our playground. We don't need or want poor people living here. We should accelerate their removal. No more affordable housing. If they can't find a job or pay their way we can house them in internment camps and use them as slave labor.

Posted by h. Brownnose on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 11:27 am

Peacefully - I disagree

Recently the progressive intelligentsia were meeting down at the Buck, united in our diversity of thinking and believing in all of the same thing, when we discussed this issue. It was decided that the entire progressive intelligentsia should oppose this development and all housing developments in San Francisco, until SEIU members received long-overdue raises equaling 50% of their last year's pay + 50 hours per year flight time on a pre-paid Net Jets card. San Francisco residents can afford it - they're all rich.

Shanti my friend. Shanti.

Posted by Gabs Haaland on May. 09, 2012 @ 9:33 pm

What'll happen if this land isn't developed?

Isn't most of it just a giant, weed-filled lot surrounded by green plastic fencing?

Anything sounds better than that.

Posted by Guest on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 11:54 am

What a specious argument!

What a specious argument! What is it like to be unable to make one's way through a city without being stricken by panic attacks at the absence of luxury condos?

What's really going to happen is that 8 Washington and the fall through of the America's Cup billionaires giveaway pier deal is going to create a critical mass of blight that is going to suck San Francisco down into the pits of hell.

That is, unless boosters convince San Franciscans to continue to bear gold bricks on red velvet pillows with golden tassels in procession towards our billionaire betters.

Posted by marcos on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 12:36 pm

If this develoment is "blight", then bring on more blight.

and there was me thinking mid-Market was blight.

Posted by Guest on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 12:51 pm

Huh?

I'd rather see condos with nice grounds and public space than I would weed-strewn, gravel-filled lots surrounded by plastic fencing.

Posted by Guest on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 2:58 pm

Yep, that's the irony. The NIBMY's are so set on changing

nothing that they actually prefer windswept, litter-strewn, crime-infested, homeless-ridden cesspits like mid-Market than an iconic, signature state of the art architectural gem on our beautiful waterfront.

So sad.

Posted by Guest on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 3:40 pm

the picture could never be

the picture could never be seen as an architectural gem, it looks like a masuoleum, or federal building with little understanding of tower or housing design on the waterfront....

even the architectural images of the proposed towers, looks poorly designed.

how can anyone allow such "pied-a-terre"s to be built non-ending while essential housing and services crumble. allowing private developers the rights to say what our city should look like....

take a look @ the BofA tower, and many other eye-sores in the city....bank/investor/real-estate/speculative investment tends to look poorly in relation to real community based, and inventive architectural concepts.

to get a winning building, you need to open the site to open competition and design entries and let the public decide what would succeed in terms of visuals....

Posted by goodmaab50 on Mar. 08, 2012 @ 10:37 pm

The San Francisco public

The San Francisco public would pick provincial claptrap. We, on the whole are not a worldly, sophisticated group when it comes to architectural innovation.
The general feeling is that our best days are behind us, and the most we can hope for is to produce a facsimile of something we enjoyed 25-30-45 years ago.

Posted by Vibral on Mar. 11, 2012 @ 10:25 am

San Francisco's own mediocrity: Steve Miller

This here's a story about Billy Joe and Bobbie Sue
Two young lovers with nothin' better to do
Than sit around the house, get high, and watch the tube
And here is what happened when they decided to cut loose

They headed down to, ooh, old El Paso
That's where they ran into a great big hassle
Billy Joe shot a man while robbing his castle
Bobbie Sue took the money and run

Go on take the money and run
Go on take the money and run
Go on take the money and run
Go on take the money and run

Posted by marcos on Mar. 11, 2012 @ 10:42 am

No hard feelings eh Marcos.

No hard feelings eh Marcos. See you in the steamroom Monday? Clean the kitchen a little better this time ok?

Posted by Vibral on Mar. 11, 2012 @ 11:21 am

8 Wash

The progress sought by the developers will utlimately prevail. It always does - their ability to stay the course for a decade through transient populations and administrations ultimately works to their favor. Better to force the development meet your needs (tax, open-air, recreation, parking, access, etc) and compromise now, accelerating development, than to foster a decade of bitterness.

Build your 12-14 story tower, attach the lower structure (4-5 stories) that includes the 140 parking spaces for tenants, 210 parking spots for the public and 70 parking spots for the health club. Let the top two floors of the parking lot house the athetic club that has 6 indoor courts (plus another 6 outdoor on the roof), an Olympic-sized heated indoor swimming pool, an indoor track, the aerobic studios, weight and exercise machines, 1-2 squash courts, a restaurant, a little family room and an open garden area. Grandfather the existing members in at lifetime reduced rates, GG and 8 Wash. residents in at discounted rates. And let's get on with life.

Posted by David S. on Mar. 11, 2012 @ 3:16 am

Excellent analysis on 8 Wash, David.

Which is why the SFBG will ignore you, not that that matters.

Posted by Anonymous on Mar. 11, 2012 @ 8:57 am

70 parking spots for the health club, eh? So "a lot of the users are longtime Golden Gateway residents and seniors", but let's make sure the city uses its power to make the developers spend millions to encourage people to drive in from next door and keep seniors driving instead of taking icky public transit.

Now that's good public policy!

Posted by Guest on May. 09, 2012 @ 11:03 pm

Now that's good public policy!

Posted by Alai on May. 09, 2012 @ 11:08 pm

Has the SFBG headquarters

Has the SFBG headquarters been sold to Union Property Capital yet?

Posted by sfbg going down on May. 09, 2012 @ 7:00 pm

I'd be a lot more impressed

I'd be a lot more impressed if there was a counterproposal that actually helped improve the housing situation: say 200 somewhat smaller condos, much less parking, and maybe even a taller building that focuses more on maximum housing than maximum views. Until then, I'm going to assume that the main drive behind this is maintaining the exclusivity that already exists, and covering it in a politically-acceptable veneer of "not doing enough for affordable housing". It's not as if the developer would refuse: you can make as much money building for a larger number of lower-income people as a smaller number of higher-income people.

Posted by Alai on May. 09, 2012 @ 11:14 pm

There was a plan to build a

There was a plan to build a higher condo development which would have included more middle-income housing. THD and the SF Bay Guardian got it shot down. Now they have to live with the consequences of their obstructionism.

San Francisco is tired of your NIMBYism Guardian. It is time to find another shtick.

Posted by Guest on May. 14, 2012 @ 9:17 pm