Ultra-green building is no match for S.F. supervisors
By: Ken Garcia
Examiner Staff Writer
March 24, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO — Perhaps if the celebrated new building proposal for 110 The Embarcadero leaned a little more to the left, it would have matched the political sensibilities of the Board of Supervisors.
But instead, the straightforward design did not meet their ideological criteria, allowing supervisors multiple reasons for why they put plans to build the greenest building in the West on hold last week, citing history, height limitations and creeping shadows among them.
A majority of supervisors, however, failed to heed the more simplistic reasons why the existing building deserves its destructive date with destiny. It’s empty, it’s ugly and it’s unsafe, and about the only thing still remaining from the original structure is a sense of ennui — the result of sad and lingering memories from the raucous beginnings of the International Longshoremen’s Association union hall.
The board may have no problem putting aside commerce in desperate economic times to satisfy its agenda, but even by those standards the decision to delay a graceful, eco-friendly office building is further proof of why local legislators should not be handed the final judgment on urban planning. And now, another year will pass before The City has a chance to start a project critics have called exquisite and beautiful.
Instead, we get a dilapidated dead space — a physical metaphor for these times.
As far as 110 The Embarcadero’s past, no one will dispute that a lot of history took place there in 1934. Then, during the great summer showdown between union members and police, two protesting workers were shot and killed outside the union hall. The workers were ultimately laid in state inside the building and the ensuing funeral was a day of mass mourning for many, ultimately followed by a four-day general strike.
That tragedy gave the union footing it might otherwise not have attained, something union leaders readily acknowledge. Yet it has little to do with the shell of the building that remains today, long abandoned and neglected, an architectural orphan that would have finally given way to a glorious new office space.
I have been a member of unions longer than any supervisor on the board, so I can certainly understand why some officials would want to pull out all the stops to embrace work-force history. But the former union hall has been stripped bare of its architectural integrity.
World-renowned chef Nancy Oakes, who owns Boulevard restaurant in the historic 1889 Audiffred Building next door, said that at one time she wanted to open a cafe in the space, but the owner wouldn’t sell it. Years later, the building was sold to a renowned architectural and development team that proposed the eye-catching “green” box covered with a trellislike mesh, replete with planters and solar panels.
The developer, Hines, hoped to start construction this fall. And now, as they like to say in city planning circles, wait till next year.
“We’ve been in the building and it’s basically raining in there,” Oakes told me. “I don’t think an empty building is a good thing. We weren’t really looking forward to the construction noise, but we’re also not in favor of it remaining boarded up.”
There may be legitimate concerns about the height of the proposed building, but that issue could have been hammered out between the developer and the neighborhood activists that rallied for the status quo.
And while the historical significance of the site could have been preserved via photos and exhibits within some part of another longshoremen’s union hall, there is simply no argument to be made for the structure that remains — unless blight is now a welcome addition to the local landscape.
“Requiring an [environmental-impact report] will simply require repetition of all the work that has been done,” Hines’ land-use attorney Michael Burke said. “A substantial delay could unnecessarily threaten the possibility of this project going forward.”
Even a lineup of current union workers asking for the project to go forward under the argument that the best way to honor union members is to provide them jobs was met with steely resistance from the board.
History has been confused with architecture. The future tripped over the past.
One could argue that this is not the best time to start blocking good development projects from going forward, economic crises being what they are these days.
But since this is San Francisco, what would be the point?
Follow The Examiner
