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Tiger Woods In "Serious" Condition After Car Crash
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SFist Interviews: John Ortved, Author of The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History
As part of the plan to build a new transit tower in SoMa, planners are tentatively proposing that the area near the terminal-to-be be zoned to allow construction of three skyscrapers, one of which might end up being the tallest building on the West Coast.
Tower of Babel jokes aside (OK, just one: Wouldn't the confusion of tongues TOTALLY explain the sideshow that is the Board of Supes?), SFist's office is in an uproar over this possible change to our city's skyline. Does this
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What is the building on the far left of your logo, anyway?
Ha! I was mystified by that one for a while, too. It's the Ferry Building clock tower. Our logo was designed by Gothamist's most excellent Sam Park, well before Jackson, Rita, and I got the site started.
I think the City's done a great job with the Rincon Hill plan to space out the towers amongst the shorter buildings and the historic 2 or 3 story buildings. I don't like that dark closed in feeling of the Financial District.
From the angle in that rendering, you can't even see the other 850' tower.
The rendering looks amazing. San Francisco's skyline has always been a little on the bland side. If you look at our skyline for any angle, it appears to tilt toward the Transamerica Pyramid and Bank of America Center. With our skyline expanding toward the south on Rincon Hill, three signature towers near the Transbay Terminal will serve as an important pinnacle and focal point for the Financial District to the north and the residential southern skyline. Chicago, Seattle, and Minneapolis all serve as perfect examples of what our skyline should aspire to be.
With these new towers, our skyline will be as dynamic as the natural beauty that surrounds the city!
Tony, do you happen to work at Kidmore, Owings & Merrill? Perhaps in their future-city art rendering department? Just taking a wild guess here.
What an amazing rendering! Strikes a perfect balance between Photoshop 3.0 and felt squares tacked onto a cork bulletin board.
Heh. Tony=pwn3d. I do like the idea, though. It's about time SF planners started thinking big, and the Transbay Terminal area is the right place for it--close to transit, not thick enough with skyscrapers to be dark and foreboding like (say) Montgomery, and nothing especially historic or interesting for NIMBYs to latch onto. Something eye-catching and ambitious would be a nice change of pace.
Plus, what is the tallest tower on the west coast doing in LA? Do they even have a downtown?
Don't worry - the NIMBY's will figure out some reason to oppose it - they always do. Look at what it happening to projects in the pipeline for the light industrial areas around Potrero Hill and the easter hoods. Board of Stupidvisors just put it all on hold and requested more "planning."
Why? Because the NIMBYs and the Bay Guardian Groupies claim that building lots of housing in that area is bad because some underutilized warehouses will get demolished and a handful of light manufacturing jobs lost. The "logic", of course, being the reason SF is no longer home to much manufacturing anymore is because of market-rate condos. (and not, like, cheaper land and labor outside the city, locations closers to cargo rail/trucking facilities or overseas competition - you know, the market.)
I don't see anything special about the rendering but I love the concept and hope it gets built and is the first of many >1000ft skyscrapers to grace SOMA.