Getting the right 469 trees to plant in the Transbay Transit Center's crowning rooftop park has been a difficult task, and in part, Apple is to blame. The long-awaited San Francisco development project, which opens late this year, has reportedly been competing for ideal tree specimen with the Silicon Valley titan's enormous doughnut-shaped campus. That, of course,
is Apple Park, which opens this month, and sought 3,000 new trees for its central green space. The Transbay Center's landscape architect Adam Greenspan and contractor Patrick Trollip explained what it was like to scouri tree nurseries to the Chronicle. From the paper:

Buying trees is a surprisingly cutthroat business. And it’s been especially challenging to locate desirable specimens because Apple has been buying up 3,000 trees for its new Cupertino headquarters. When Greenspan and Trollip found a tree they fancied they would “tag it” with a locking yellow tag, so that nobody else — like Apple — could get it. Eventually all the tagged trees were moved to a nursery in Sunol, where the Transbay project team leased 4 acres.

60 trees have been delivered to the Transbay Transit Center so far — they began arriving in January — and the 5.4-acre rooftop garden is beginning to take shape, the tops of trees now visible from the street. “I think there is going to be a tree for everyone,” Greenspan told the Chronicle. “We have grand and stately trees, and we also have weird trees, quirky ones.”

Transbay Transit Center Project via Facebook

“This is going to be one of the great parks of San Francisco, and it’s going to be a public space unlike anything else we have,” said Gabriel Metcalf, president of the urban think tank SPUR. He's far from alone in that opinion, which is shared by the architect Cesar Pelli: The Chronicle's critic John King visited Pelli at his firm in New Haven this week, and after King commended Pelli on 560 Mission, his "favorite San Francisco tower of the past 15 years," Pelli responded with praise for the Transbay project.

“I’m very proud of 560 Mission, but the transit center with the tower is much better — more important... The wonderful thing about those big projects is that they have a large impact on the city.” Pelli added, “That impact, if you plan and design it carefully, can be very much for the good.”

Pelli is an interesting figure for King to invoke right now, since last week, the critic quoted the complaints of Stanley Saitowitz, an architect critical of SF Planning. "Planning wants textbook replicas," Saitowitz lamented. The department had no appreciation — or understanding — for architecture, he asserted.

That lead Curbed to seek a rebuttal from John Rahaim, SF's Planning Director. Rahaim outlined an ethos of "preventing really egregious architecture," the kind of stuff that looks like "crap" in five years. "You can’t create great architecture through zoning and review," he said.

In the late 1980s, Pelli himself designed a building for San Francisco that might not have stood the test of time: A 400-foot tower for Market Street that would have been crowned with a 120-foot lattice. But Pelli, who was the dean of Yale's school of architecture before founding his firm in 1977, is an example of a designer who's made peace with the difference between academic and actual architecture. Hey, if it's planning departments who prevent things like this vision of a future San Francisco, dug up by the Redditors of r/retrofuturism, then maybe we ought to thank them.

via Reddit

Of course, these flying saucers on the Embarcadero could be sort of cool, now that I think about it. What if we planted some trees on them?

Related: Apple's Spaceship Doughnut Campus, Officially Named Apple Park, To Open In April

While one nook of Market Street, basically an area from Market to Mission between Valencia and 11th Streets, has been included in 2008's Market and Octavia Area Plan, now the Planning Department is exploring raised height allowances on certain buildings there, separating it out with its own plan. The Hub, as the area is being called, is according to Planning's website, an out-of-circulation nickname for the area. From the 1880s through the 1950s, however, they say the area was known by the name because it was an area where cable car lines converged.

To envision the changes that the creation of the Hub plan would allow for, Planning went ahead and created this interactive website, a chance to compare the skyline as it appears today, as it would appear under current plans, and as it might appear under the Hub plan. Renderings are from all different vantage points: Upper Market, Jefferson Square Park, Corona Heights, and McKinley Square.

The Chronicle delved into the Hub idea earlier this month, calling the area "historically neglected." The "tangled web of asphalt where South Van Ness Avenue, 12th Street, Mission Street, McCoppin Street, Gough Street, Otis Street and Brady Street all come together," in their words, perhaps the "most dismal intersection in San Francisco."

View from Jefferson Square Park with proposed Hub height limits. Rendering via Planning.

As construction continues to boom, however, that could change: 3,700 planned housing units are headed to the area, and Planning thinks, according to Hoodline's coverage, that taller buildings allowed for under a Hub plan could add another 1,200 units.

That could be done, they say, with increased height limits for developments at 10 South Van Ness, which could gain 500 feet; 30 Van Ness, which could add 520 feet; and 1 South Van Ness, which could perhaps add as many as 600 feet.

View from Corona Heights with proposed Hub height limits. Rendering via Planning.

However, the Chronicle finds much of this unlikely as those major projects are already underway.

“In a perfect world, we would have done this work before we had these applications — so now it’s a bit of a dance,” Lily Langlois of the Planning Department told the Chron. “There are a number that are moving forward under existing zoning. There are others that could move forward or could wait and take advantage of the plan.” For example, two projects are already approved as is and ready to break ground this year. Will they really wait around? The paper speculates that the three city-related projects, where San Francisco owns the property or will be a future tenant, will get onboard with the Hub plan. Those are the Goodwill site, 33 Gough, and 30 Van Ness.

View from McKinley Square with proposed Hub height limits. Rendering via Planning.

Astute commenters on yesterday's post on Embarcadero Center's Super Bowl wrap fail wondered if such displays violated San Francisco's advertising regulations, and/or if the building owners could be fined for the vast billboards. But as with everything else about the Super Bowl, you'll be SOOOO SURPRISED to hear that it's unlikely that anyone will face fines — and that even permitted display advertising for the event didn't have to pay the usual local fees.

As commenter Tarniv noted Wednesday, section 611 of SF's General Advertising Sign Program "is pretty cut and dry"

No new general advertising signs shall be permitted at any location within the City as of March 5, 2002, except as provided in Subsection (b) of this ordinance Subsection B just applies to signs on motor vehicles and ones "in the public right of way" only. Section 610 says they should be paying $2.5k/day to the city for violations.

Additionally, Section 604 says they would need a building permit to do this. For the address 4 Embarcadero Center, no permit at all related to external signage/billboards/advertisements has been made in 2015 or 2016.

It's not just SFist commenters who are noting the possible violation. According to Hoodline, the (as of yesterday, off-kilter) giant ad wrap on Embarcadero Center 4 and another 20-story Super Bowl ad on the Hilton Union Square got the attention of area activist Jamie Whitaker, who said that "the buildings that attach these extremely large illegal advertisements to their buildings are counting on the Planning Department to be negligent in their enforcement role. I hope Planning proves them wrong, and immediately enforces the Planning Code and charges penalties allowed by San Francisco law."

Whitaker had better prepare for disappointment, though, as a spokesperson with Planning told Hoodline that "it is a Super Bowl sponsor sign ... they got the green light from the Mayor's Office, as [the ads] are temporary, and connected to a civic celebration."

"You will most likely see more of these Super Bowl signs, but again, they are temporary," Planning spokesperson Gina Simi said.

"Even if we did enforce, due process would allow them to stay up for 30 days. They are expected to be removed in a timely manner after February 7th."

And the skyscraper wraps aren't the only Super Bowl advertising that doesn't have to follow the laws of the land! You know those 1,600-pound, light-up, "50" signs that people keep vandalizing with graffiti like "Evict Ed Lee"?

Well, while Hoodline reports that the NFL and the Super Bowl Host Committee did get permits for all four of the displays, they didn't pay any of the four $1125 application fees each "minor encroachment" permit would cost pretty much anyone else.

"The permit fees were waived as this is part of the civic celebration," a Rec and Parks spokesperson said. Hmm, maybe when the Board of Supes demand that City Hall renegotiate the event's costs with the NFL, they should remind them that the first step in negotiations is "don't give away the whole goddamn farm."

Previously: Supervisors Now Demanding City Hall Renegotiate Super Bowl 50 Deal
Photo Du Jour: Embarcadero Center Super Bowl Wrap Fail