[Crane Creek Park rendering via Port of San Francisco]
Some of it may still look like an industrial wasteland, but the long bayfront edge of town is San Francisco's last frontier for expansion. At Pier 70, a huge and forbidding swath of property better known for its impounded cars, Ports is piecing together a plan for development, with components to click into place with the Blue Greenway and the Eastern Neighborhoods plans. Developers and architects (and Curbed SF) got a tour of the site last Friday. The Pier 70 project isn't just a pier, it's sixty-five historic acres of the largest shipbuilding operation on the West Coast, dating back to the 1850's- "the oldest, largest and most intact historic industrial complex in San Francisco." So like the Ferry Building, an exercise in preservation as well as development, in vast corrugated steel sheds.
The actual Pier 70, somewhat the worse for wear (looking north)
Corrugated steel sheds on the left and right are historic, as is the wood structure on the far right
Click on map to enlarge
You can drive/walk/bike into much of the site via 20th Street although there's no waterfront access yet. It's full of activity- many of the old buildings are now artists studios or warehouses and there's a plan to move business displaced from other piers by the America's Cup- all with short leases. There's a busy scrap metal business (complete with crane flinging cars about) and a working shipyard. The shipyard stays. Currently the requests for proposals are solely for business facilities; residential comes later on the site's western edge. No one expects this to happen quickly, so there's still plenty of time- maybe a decade- to argue about parking.
· Pier 70 Preferred Master Plan [Port of San Francisco]
· 150-year-old Seeks Prince Charming for Long-Term Relationship [Curbed SF Archives]
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