View the full article: The Reinvention of This S.F. Island is Undergoing its First Phase — The Rest Will Take Decades, which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on August 25, 2024.
There’s no stranger slice of San Francisco right now than the one that begins 2 miles northeast of the Embarcadero, on Treasure Island.
Freshly planted shasta daisies and toyon trees line a 22-story luxury high-rise that is almost ready to open, across the street from an empty lot with dirt piled 10 feet high. On the tower’s other side is a condominium project wrapped in scaffolding and, beyond that, a fenced-off job training center for low-income youth.
Another fence lines the nearby shoreline — but that one screens construction crews at work on a 6-acre waterfront park set to open next year.
You get the picture: The reinvention of the 425-acre island created in the 1930s out of rubble and sand to hold the Golden Gate International Exposition is a work in progress that likely will continue for decades. But the first phase is far enough along that if you’re curious about how urban landscapes emerge and mature, this is the summer to start taking notes.
The work completed so far includes three residential buildings and the streetscapes along them, as well as the miniature ferry terminal that began service in 2022. Two six-story market-rate housing complexes are sheathed but fully shaped en route to debuting by next summer, around the same time as the bayside park with dead-on views of San Francisco’s downtown skyline and home-shrouded hills. There also are townhomes and condominiums tucked into the slopes of adjacent Yerba Buena Island, as well as Hiroshi Sugimoto’s needle-thin “Point of Infinity” sculpture.
Reinventing Treasure Island
But any large transformation needs a visual hook to alert the public that big changes have arrived. That’s what Treasure Island now has with Isle House, the 250-unit apartment tower designed by David Baker Architects for Wilson Meany and Stockbridge, part of the islands’ master development team.
Baker has made his mark with inventive low-income housing such as 222 Taylor St. in the Tenderloin, or such stylish complexes as Hayes Valley’s 300 Ivy St. This is the firm’s first high-rise, easily viewed from the Embarcadero as a vertical accent to Treasure Island’s tabletop terrain.
From this perspective there’s not much going on, a tall squat cube with a flat top and a pale skin. It’s when you step off the quick ferry from the Ferry Building (where else?) that Isle House’s urbane poise comes into focus.
For starters, the simple rectangle isn’t so simple: The tower is set apart from a six-story base by a recessed floor clad largely in glass. From there on up, serrated but subtle bays enliven the dimensions without being choppy.
Many architects would do that one twist and call it a day. Baker keeps going.
The bottom two levels are black brick while the rest of the base wears a randomized mix of three shades of gray tiles. Above that, Baker shifts to clean white plaster — and arranges that plaster in strong upward strips, rather than punched windows or horizontal bands. The pattern is evocative of the stylish vintage airplane hangars along nearby Clipper Cove, a reminder that historical allusions have a place in contemporary design.
A wholly different approach to Treasure Island’s renewal is two blocks to the north at Star View Court, where people this summer began moving into the seven-story structure that holds 138 apartments stacked around a long central courtyard.
Unlike Isle House, which consists almost entirely of market-rate apartments, Star View Court is reserved for low-income residents. This includes 94 that are set aside for households — many of them formerly homeless — who already live on the island in what originally was military housing. Those blocks of suburban-style homes will likely remain for at least the next decade, along with the island’s scattering of restaurants among the older buildings.
The emphasis on income diversity is constant in the redevelopment plans, with approximately 2,200 of the eventual 8,000 units to be priced at below-market levels. But the plans also call for a uniform level of building quality, and Star View Court fits seamlessly into the emerging landscape.
Along Seven Seas Avenue, which serves as Treasure Island’s main north-south roadway, the building developed by Mercy Housing is a seven-story bar in muted tones of white and gray. On the pedestrian-scaled mid-block alley to the west, heights drop to four stories with porches fanning out along the way. The closest thing to an architectural flourish comes where the two sides meet in a glassy community room that juts out from the second floor — it faces an empty lot that someday will be a park — and is backed by a metal-screened open walkway for residents and their guests.
“With affordable housing you only get a few shots to do something interesting” in terms of design, said Eric Robinson, a principal at Paulett Taggart Architects, the project’s designer. “You need to be strategic.”
Put another way: If Isle House is aimed at residents with high discretionary incomes, Star Court adds to the district character not just architecturally, but by providing a good home for people who might have few other options. That latter goal is palpable inside, whether strolling through the lobby with its chic bamboo screen that both absorbs noise and hides the mail alcove, or the central courtyard that consists of planter-framed spaces spilling one into the next.
As for the design affinity between the two new buildings — those white plaster walls, for instance — it’s no accident.
The island’s redevelopment plan is accompanied by design standards encouraging buildings that are similar to each other without feeling boilerplate. Two examples: The window-to-wall ratio for each structure is set at 50%, and light masonry tones are encouraged over metal panels or bold colors.
“The architectural ethos is to make really cohesive neighborhoods with buildings that are distinguished, yet diverse,” said Craig Hartman, a consulting partner of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill who was central to the island’s planning and design principles. “There will be lessons learned along the way, but it’s a strong framework.”
The effort to craft a unified tone can also be gleaned in the mid-block alleys of the first phase with their drought-tolerant landscaping and the tough-looking benches and bike racks forged from cast iron. This aspect of the plan is the work of CMG Landscape Architecture, which also designed the shoreline park now taking shape.
The park’s debut will be next summer at the earliest — but the obviously new level of riprap along the edges offers a clue to how Treasure Island’s rebranding isn’t just buildings and parks. All the new parkland and development sites are perched 3.5 feet above the older portions of the island, a height calibrated to long-term projections for sea level rise.
None of this happens by chance.
Planning for the islands’ future began even before the U.S. Navy closed its base in the middle of the bay in 1997. San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 2007 approved the plan, done by Perkins & Will as well as SOM. Construction crews in 2015 began raising the edges and tamping down the soil — the latter a response to seismic concerns, not just climate change.
The new buildings we see aren’t the end of the story: Cityside Park and the two scaffolded market-rate condo projects should open by next fall. By then, work will be under way of the renovation of the chapel building across from Isle House and the conversion of the empty land around it into a “cultural park,” also designed by CMG.
As for the handful of remaining housing sites in the project’s first phase, construction won’t begin until the first wave is absorbed.
“There are periods where the market is difficult, and periods where things seem to get built overnight,” said Chris Meany, who joined the development team in 2005.
Despite the wait, and the inevitable lawsuits and economic jostles along the way, “in another 20 years, this will be one of the great created neighborhoods in the country,” Meany promised this month. “I’m convinced of that.”
It’s much too early to tell whether Meany’s confidence will bear fruit. But judging by the puzzle’s first pieces, such claims aren’t just hype.
View the full article: The Reinvention of This S.F. Island is Undergoing its First Phase — The Rest Will Take Decades, which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on August 25, 2024.