The Sunset’s New Skyscraper Drawings Look Hilarious
Image via Solomon Cordwell Buenz
You may have heard of the new planned skyscraper coming to the Sunset (allegedly). Some are calling it “The West Side Stories”, and others “The Sunset Skyscraper”. The building’s architects submitted new renderings this week for the condo complex planned to be built across from the San Francisco Zoo in the Outer Sunset.
What is comical about the building is that it’s now 50 stories tall (approx 580 feet) in a neighborhood that barely has a building taller than 3 stories. So yes, it will stick out…even next to the Giraffe concourse.
Image via Solomon Cordwell Buenz. If the developers were smart they’d call this thing”Zootopia”.
The new renderings show a building with 680 units, 110 being affordable units. The base of the building, which would be located between Sloat Boulevard and Wawona Street (between 45th and 46th) would include space for “retail, community centers, and a gym, as well as underground parking.”
Image via Solomon Cordwell Buenz
The architectural firm (Solomon Cordwell Buenz) and the site’s developer CH Planning LLC, cite San Francisco’s need for housing as a good reason to ‘OK’ the project, our city has a state-mandated plan to build 82,000 new units over the next eight years. Presumably, the city will have to build those units somewhere, and we can’t build all of them 1.5 miles down the road next to SF State, or downtown where no one wants to live anymore, or on Treasure Island where no one ever wanted to live (TI already has 8,000 new units planned to be built in the upcoming years.)
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Homeowners in the Sunset are unsurprisingly against the project. The “Save Our Neighborhoods SF” or SONSF has an online petition out against the project and has been gathering signatures since the project was first introduced (as of May they had +2000 signatures). Below is their opposition letter via www.sonsf.org
To: San Francisco Mayors Office, Board Of Supervisors, Planning Department, and HOME-SF
From: [Your Name]
STOP 2700 SLOAT BLVD
Help to Preserve the Nature & Character of San Francisco Neighborhoods
I vehemently OPPOSE to this high-density, high-rise project. It is NOT an appropriate project for our Neighborhood.
It will NOT serve the Community or Neighborhood.
2700 Sloat Blvd. Project WILL:
Stress the already taxed Infrastructure
Block natural light & impact our open skyline
Increase light pollution
Adversely alter or destroy the rare & healthy Soundscapes & Acoustic Environments
Increase traffic & create safety risks (Muni is NOT going to add more trains)
Adversely impact residential/neighborhood parking even more
Adversely impact the local Eco-Systems
Increase unoccupied residential & commercial space resulting in derelict structures
Have a negative psychological impact on the Community
Put people out of work at Sloat Garden Center & potentially other local small businesses
Become a blight on the neighborhood
Become Urban Development 2.0 – Unsuccessful: in the past & in the future
Lower Property Values for all
Regards,
San Francisco Resident
Image via Solomon Cordwell Buenz
SF planning department director Rich Hillis told the press this Spring that, “The proposed project is flat out inconsistent with local zoning and added, “It sets back our efforts to appropriately add housing on the City’s west side and meet our Housing Element targets. Frankly, it’s a distraction.”
The Sunset District’s supervisor Joel Engardio also told the press, “We need housing all through the west side. Absolutely. That site needs housing. But to plop a Salesforce Tower there — it’s ridiculous.”
But the project would include 110 affordable housing units restricted to people making less than 80% of the city’s median income, aims to use the ‘state density bonus law’, which allows for 50% more density in exchange for a higher percentage of affordable units, to build more stories.
What this boils down to is that the law is open to interpretation, and the developers are really just bargaining here. ‘Ask for 50, and settle on 25 stories’ kind of thing.
The 50-story proposal is the fourth iteration of the proposed building in three years. The original proposal was for 8 stories with 213 units, which was then increased to 12 stories and 283 units, and then to 400 condos, before the current 680 units.
Maybe by next summer, the proposal will have grown to the size of the Salesforce Tower (1,070 feet) making the most current skyscraper look quite reasonable, by comparison.
If you’re against the project, whose backyard should they build this thing in instead? As long as it’s not in my neighborhood…
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