Why do we need a highrise, anyway?By Tim Redmond
KQED's Forum did an entire hour this morning on the proposed Transbay Terminal project, and the best question come for a seven-year-old.
The panelists were not exactly offering a visionary approach to urban planning: Dean Macris, the interim city planning director who never met a tall building he didn't like, was on, along with the Chronicle's John King, who thinks at least one of the projects is beautiful, and Clark Manus, past president of the American Institute of Architecture. The panel talked about public space and the beauty of these various buildings until a call came in from someone who wouldn't give her name.
Michael Krasny, the host, asked why she wanted to be anonymous. "Because I'm only seven," she said.
Then she asked her question:
Why do we need to build a big highrise anyway? Why not a park?
Well, the guests hemmed and hawed a bit, but Macris finally acknowledged the truth: We're building a highrise not because we want or need another tall building, or because there's such a pent-up demand for highrise office space or because we want to be cooler than Chicago, which is building an even bigger tower. It's because this is how we're going to finance the Transbay Terminal. Period.
Terrible reason to build a highrise. Thanks, kid, for at least raising the issue.
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Comments (5)
Tall buildings can be pieces of art, if done properly.
Take a look at Santiago Calatrava's Turning Torso building and you can see what an opportunity was missed at One Rincon Hill.
http://www.arcspace.com/architects/calatrava/torso2/torso2.html
Posted by jeff | August 14, 2007 04:03 PM
The 7 year old asked if they should build a parking garage.
Isn't the goal of urban planning to have high density around transit?
Posted by mike | August 14, 2007 06:36 PM
Tim,
Of course, we all know that 7-year old kids love watching dull adult panelists speak at an urban planning and public policy forum broadcast on KQED. It is unfortunate that the child's parent(s) who had the child place the call to the show did not have either the maturity or courage to ask the question themselves.
Of course, the better question to have asked would have been why do we need to spend about $1 billion dollars to build a bus/train terminal? How many homeless individuals could be housed or schools renovated for $1 billion dollars? I fully support the expansion and improvement of our transit infrastructure, but I would think we could build a functional and attractive terminal for perhaps 1/3 to 1/2 of the current budget.
That being said, as our elected officials have apparently committed us to building a $1 billion dollar "landmark" terminal, they have to find a viable way to finance it. While you have written several times that you feel hefty tax increases are the best way to finance the new terminal, there just does not appear to be either the political will or the community support for significant tax increases. Any local financing would have to come in the form of a bond financed by local property tax increases. Building a new Transbay Terminal is both necessary and popular, but I think voters would quickly lose their enthusiasm for the project if asked to foot the majority of the $1 billion cost of a new terminal. Even in "progressive" San Francisco where voters routinely support bond measures for public projects, these same voters have shown they will not support a bond measure that they believe is too large--and this was demonstrated recently when voters twice rejected an affordable housing bond. If $1 billion terminal is going to be built, then it is going to have to be financed by allowing the construction of a new highrise and related development.
At the end of the day, the best place to build a very tall building is downtown where the new Transbay Tower is planned to rise. San Francisco's downtown already has a densely built up highrise district and the parking lots and rundown buildings immediately adjacent to the highrise core make perfect sense as an expansion area for this skyscraper district. No one is suggesting we put a 1,200 foot tower in the Mission or the Haight or the Sunset or Russian Hill. A well-designed tall glassy pinnacle tower will simply add some pizzazz to what is a rather uniform, boxy, and dull skyline.
There are so many more important local, national and global issues to worry about than the construction of a skyscraper downtown. A Transbay Tower will be built, and we should all accept it and move on.
Posted by Chris | August 14, 2007 08:31 PM
Are there any decent pictures (illustrations) of the proposed Transbay development?
Posted by San Francisco team building | August 15, 2007 11:49 AM
Perhaps if the taxpayers were going to fund this the terminal would have come in at a more reasonable price.
The point is, we may have to live with this highrise, but I am sick and tired to doing business this way -- everything we want as a city has to be done as part of a giveaway to the private sector. The only way we are funding affordable housing on a regular, ongoing basis is through "inclusionary" rules that say: We'll let you build 85 high-end condos for the rich if you will just please build 15 for the rest of us. So the acceptable housing mix is 85 percent rich people, 15 percent everyone else.
This is no way to run a city.
Posted by tim redmond | August 15, 2007 10:29 PM