* If the drained (blow-off) water is reused instead of coming from the water supply, an additional 420,000 gallons of water could be saved by using pulse technology.

Water treatment with momentum and EPA/USGBC goals
Pulsed power physical water treatment has transformed the way evaporative cooling systems are treated. Pulsed power uses pulsed electric fields (a technology developed by the food industry for pasteurization) to control scale, biological growth and corrosion. This completely chemical-free approach to water treatment eliminates all of the environmental and health and safety issues associated with water treatment chemicals. With pulsed systems, there are no pumps to break and no chemical tanks to run dry. Additionally, they are more forgiving of operational disruptions and generally allow cooling towers to operate at higher concentration cycles (hence less blowdown and less water usage) than with traditional chemical treatment. Independent studies show that not only is the method effective for cooling towers, but the performance of pulsed systems is superior to traditional chemical treatment in terms of biological control and water usage. By eliminating the problems associated with chemical water treatment, water-cooled condensers' advantages make them an environmentally friendly, energy efficient and economical choice that is consistent with the goals of the EPA and USGBC initiatives.

Electronics are used to reduce the formation of limescale in piping systems caused by calcium or magnesium carbonate in the water. Electronic systems create a pulsed, time-dependent, induced electric field in a PVC pipe built directly into the cooling tower's recirculating water system. The electrical signal changes the way minerals precipitate in the water, completely avoiding hard limescale deposits by instead creating a non-stick mineral powder in the water. This powder is easily filterable and is mostly removed during normal blowdown, or it settles loosely in the cooling tower basin so it can be easily removed annually. Bacteria become incorporated into this mineral powder and therefore leave the system by blowdown, filtration, or settling. The encapsulated bacteria (some of which have had their membrane walls injured by electroporation, resulting in cell lysis) cannot reproduce, resulting in an extremely low bacterial population. Water softening is not required (nor recommended) with this type of system treatment, and high concentration cycles are usually achievable, resulting in significant water savings. This technology is based on the ability to eliminate biofilm (a slime layer with more than four times the insulating power of mineral deposits) using pulse power, and allows for energy savings of at least 5 percent compared to traditional chemical treatment processes.

Water-based cooling systems are typically treated with chemicals to prevent scale buildup, control biological activity, and prevent corrosion. In chemical water treatment, the chemicals or their toxic byproducts enter the environment through leaks, water runoff (blown-off), air emissions, spills, overspray, and drift. These chemical emissions are harmful to the environment. Chlorine or another biocide is often used in a cooling tower to control biological activity and reduce pathogens. Most of the chlorine added to the system is quickly released into the atmosphere as chlorine gas. Corrosion inhibitors such as zinc, silicates, molybdenates, and phosphates are released in drift from the tower and in overspray, and settle to the bottom with the blowdown and pass through the sewer system. Water softeners are often used to prevent scale buildup, and amounts of brine are discharged as part of the water softening process.

In a LEED-certified project with a relatively small cooling system (400 tons or 1,200 gpm, operating 12 hours per day, 5 days per week – 3,120 hours per year), it was demonstrated that the use of pulsed-rate water treatment avoided the discharge of 1,145,644 gallons of chemically contaminated water (20 ppm phosphates, 2 ppm zinc, and 1 ppm chlorine and disinfection byproducts) as blowdown and drift, 4 to 5 gallons of isothiazoline, and 749.1 gallons of industrial-strength chlorine bleach. Much larger cooling systems have been quantified in the same way in other LEED projects, with results understandably orders of magnitude higher.

With respect to the above project, when coupled with typical cooling tower characteristics as provided by the Cooling Technology Institute (CTI) in Houston, it can be calculated that 739.6 pounds or gallons of chlorine evaporate annually from this tower. Considering the hours of operation and the typical airflow from this tower, the chlorine concentration in the exiting air is 0.51 ppm. The level of chlorine release is significant: the OSHA short-term (15-minute) exposure limit is 1 ppm (3,000 µg/m3) and the OSHA TWA PEL (8-hour average) is 0.5 ppm (1,500 µg/m3).

As previously mentioned, this building's cooling tower system uses a 400 ton cooling tower system with an estimated circulation rate of 1,200 gpm. Using CTI's rules of thumb, it can be calculated that this system will evaporate 1,123,200 gallons of water annually, expel 22,464 gallons of water as drift, and blow down 1,123,200 gallons of water annually when chemically treated (at 2 concentration cycles) or 561,600 gallons of water when treated with pulsed power (at 3 concentration cycles). This gives a total annual water use of 2,268,864 gallons (at chemical treatment) or 1,707,264 gallons (at pulsed power). This analysis shows that using pulsed water treatment saves 561,100 gallons of water annually (that's how much less water is blown off), or approximately 50 percent of the total water blown off in a chemical treatment (or 25 percent of the total water used in a chemical treatment, minus the amount of water created by drift). While concentration cycles vary from project to project due to various factors (system size, loading, mineral content of the water, etc.), the water savings from pulsed technology over chemical treatment are typically 15 to 45 percent before considering the environmentally friendly and recyclable characteristics of the blowdown water discharged from a pulsed system, which can save significantly more water when reused.

In this project, the use of pulsed water treatment provides environmental benefits and water savings compared to traditional chemical water treatment. The amounts of chemicals that would be released annually during cooling tower operation using chemical treatment are:

1. 739.6 pounds of chlorine gas.
2. 4 to 5 gallons of isothiazoline by drift and blowdown.
3. 1,145,644 gallons of contaminated blowdown and drift water containing 20 ppm phosphate, 2 ppm zinc, and 1 ppm chlorine (including disinfection byproducts).

The reduction in total water use calculates to an annual water savings of approximately 25 percent (or 561,600 gallons) compared to a typical open system with conventional chemical treatment. An additional 561,600 gallons of water discharged (blow-off) annually using pulse flow technology is environmentally friendly and has been recycled or reused at various sites (toilet flushing, lawn watering, etc.), saving even more gallons that do not need to be used via the water source (make-up water). The total annual “holistic level” water savings for this project could be 50 percent or 1,123,200 gallons.

Using the previously mentioned standard (2 gallons of water are used to generate one KWH), the annual energy consumption for this project using pulsed current technology is 280,800 KWH less than chemical treatment (not including the energy savings from biofilm removal). Using pulsed current technology, energy consumption could be further reduced by reusing blowdown water instead of using new makeup water.

Make a decision
The significant environmental benefits of pulse power technology, along with the significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from using water-cooled systems, contribute significantly to achieving EPA and USGBC goals. If you must choose between air-cooled or water-cooled HVAC systems, carefully weigh your options and think about the pros and cons of each system type.

Jerry Ackerman, former Marketing Director of Clearwater Systems (now part of EVAPCO), is an independent marketing consultant and freelance writer for various construction companies. You can reach him at [email protected].

This article was first written in 2008 and is still relevant in 2018.

The post What a Water-Cooled HVAC System Can Do for Your Constructing appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Accounting giant KPMG may be pulling out of its namesake 26-story office tower in San Francisco.

The Netherlands-based company wants to move to a smaller office after its lease for 125,000 square feet at 55 2nd Street in the South Financial District expires at the end of the year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, also citing a new listing as unidentified sources.

KPMG currently occupies eight floors of the 35,000-square-foot granite and green-tinted glass building, which is managed and partially owned by New York-based Paramount Group.

A year after the Art Deco-inspired building was constructed in 2002, the accounting firm signed a 10-year lease for 90,000 square feet of office space while also securing naming rights. It then increased its footprint and took up a third of the tower.

With nearly two decades of occupancy nearing expiration, the offices are on the market for direct lease.

According to the Chronicle, people with knowledge of the listing confirmed that KPMG was looking for a new, smaller office in San Francisco last year.

They told the newspaper that KPMG is seeking around 75,000 square meters of office space, 40 percent less than the current office space. It's not clear if it has found a new location.

It is also unknown whether the company is negotiating to keep all or some of its offices on 2nd Street.

His exit would impact San Francisco's office market, which currently has 35.9 vacancies following a general shift to remote work. This would also impact the building's landlords as they would be pressured to reduce rents.

According to the San Francisco Business Times, Israel-based Paramount Group and Harel Insurance purchased the building in August 2019 for $408 million, or $1,054 per square foot. The occupancy rate was 95.7 percent.

The joint venture assumed an existing $137 million mortgage associated with the acquisition and “increased that by an additional $50 million,” Paramount said in a 2019 annual report to its investors.

That $187 million mortgage is due in 2026, according to the Chronicle.

The tower, which is now 86.7 percent occupied, has tenants such as software companies Intercom and Rippling.

So far, Paramount has averted the fate of other landlords who abandoned properties after defaulting on loans on increasingly hollow office buildings.

Last week, Paramount and Blackstone reached an agreement to extend a $975 million loan tied to the 1.6 million-square-foot One Market Plaza at 1 Market Street in the Financial District.

In October, Paramount was in danger of defaulting on a $273 million loan tied to a 60,000-square-foot tower at 300 Mission Street in the South Financial District. However, he managed to land financing, which is now due in 2026, according to a regulatory filing.

—Dana Bartholomew

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Houston-based Hines submitted an action plan to fix its four-year-old building after two floods caused by a faulty sprinkler system deemed it uninhabitable, according to the San Francisco Business Times.

The firm received a plumbing permit to repair a section of 33 Tehama in San Francisco’s fire sprinkler system that caused the “reoccurring leaks,” public records show. A Hines spokesperson told the Business Times that the company now has 30 days to make repairs to the standpipe, but added that it will “amend the permits” if more time is needed.

Magnusson Klemencic Associates, the structural engineer of record, inspected the property after the incidents and came to the conclusion that “there has been no structural impact to the building,” according to the plan, which was filed with the Department of Building Inspection.

The initial incident in June that caused this call to action was a failure of a coupling on the 35th (top) floor standpipe, which resulted in 20,000 gallons of water flooding the building.

The most recent incident was another water leak that caused the evacuation of 10 residents and 15 construction workers last month. That leak was caused by a pipe being disconnected at the same standpipe that caused the first flood.

DBI issued the action plan after visiting the building in August and delivered Hines a Notice of Violation on Aug. 16. The notice’s aim was to pressure the firm to begin working on the required repairs.

Hines hired Turner Construction to complete the repairs of the 403-unit SoMa building. They did not disclose any estimated costs for the repairs.

The most recent flood happened weeks after Hines changed reoccupation timelines presented in June for the building, where it told residents that the building would remain uninhabitable until late this year or early next year. Residents were initially told they would be able to return in phases between August and October. The new goal is a return during the first half of 2023.

Hines told the business times that it “will not have a more accurate target timeline until our assessments of the fire suppression system and electrical system are complete.”

The firm stopped providing financial assistance to displaced residents and said residents may terminate their lease or come back to the building when it is safe. Residents have not been obligated to pay rent since Aug. 18.

Hines and Invesco delivered the building in 2018. Lendlease Group was the general contractor; Arquitectonica was the architect.

— Pawan Naidu

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• KPMG is set to move out of its $400 million namesake building as the city’s ‘doom loop’ continues to batter its downtown region
• It comes as shoe store Alto also prepares to exit San Francisco Centre, the city’s biggest mall, next week
• Nearly 100 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the start of the pandemic, a decline of more than 50 percent, according to a recent report 

Accounting firm KPMG is set to move out of its $400 million namesake building, another high-profile exit from San Francisco’s beleaguered downtown.

The consulting and accounting giant first leased space in the 25-story office tower when the building opened in 2002.  Its name hangs above the entry to the skyscraper where the company currently occupies more than 100,000 square feet. 

It comes as shoe store Alto prepares to exit San Francisco Centre, the city’s biggest mall, next week.

Businesses and residents have fled downtown San Francisco since the pandemic with groups blaming crime, homelessness and work-from-home keeping people from downtown. 

Nearly 100 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the start of the pandemic, a decline of more than 50 percent, according to a recent report. 

KPMG is set to move out of its $400 million namesake building after two decades in downtown San Francisco Nordstrom have recently moved out of the city’s downtown contributing to a loss of footfall

KMPG, a large accounting and financial firm, originally took 90,000 square feet at 55 Second St. in a 10-year contract, marking the second-largest office deal of 2003.

It has since grown its footprint to span nearly one-third of the 380,000-square-foot building, leading to it being widely known as ‘The KPMG Building’.

The company is now considering ending its two-decade-long relationship with the building, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s the latest tenant looking to exit the downtown area. 

Now, another business is set to leave the area’s largest shopping center as Aldo moves its store from the San Francisco Centre. The mall lost Adidas last Saturday, as well as other recent losses including Hollister, Lego and J. Crew. 

The mall lost $910 million between 2016 and 2023, with half the rental space now empty, according to an appraisal published last month.

Its owners lost control of the 5-million-square-foot retail and office complex to lenders last year. 

The high-profile closures and exits suggest San Francisco’s ‘doom loop’ is far from over. A doom loop is where a city loses its tax base and can’t afford improvements needed to fix the situation to bring new businesses and residents back to an area. 

The city’s downtown has suffered from the proliferation of homeless encampments, open-air drugs markets and rampant theft. 

Hordes of brand names, including the likes of Whole Food and Nordstrom, that have recently moved out contributing to a loss of footfall that then drives out other businesses.

The city has also struggled for years with rampant fentanyl use and fatal overdoses. 

Nearly 100 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the start of the COVID pandemic, a decline of more than 50 percent, according to a recent report The city’s downtown has suffered from the proliferation of homeless encampments, open-air drugs markets and rampant theft The city has also struggled for years with rampant fentanyl use and fatal overdoses

In the first five months of 2023, preliminary reports show there were 346 overdose deaths in the city – an increase of more than 40 percent from the same period in 2022.

Economists have warned the city is spiraling into an ‘urban doom loop’ – a vicious circle of interconnected trends and forces that send cities into economic and social ruin.

High theft has proved a problem in the area recently, with a Walgreens in the city center resolving to chaining their freezers to stop shoplifters.

Retail stalwart Old Navy announced they would be shuttering their flagship store in the area last month.

Anthropologie and Office Depot have also made the same decisions.

These stores joined the growing list of stores that have abandoned the coastal city, including H&M, Marshall’s, Gap and Banana Republic.

A disturbing recent report showed 95 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the start of the COVID pandemic, a decline of more than 50 percent.

Out of 203 retailers open in 2019 in the city’s Union Square area, just 107 are still operating, a drop of 47 percent in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.

The post KPMG transferring out of $400million ‘KMPG constructing’ in downtown San Francisco with close by besieged mall loses one other tenant as doom loop continues to see residents and companies flee liberal-led metropolis appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Unpaid Contractors Sue as Partly Renovated San Francisco Office Building is Sold | Engineering News-Record

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By Jack Rogers

October 02, 2023 at 05:18 AM

City’s “request for info” draws eight buildings, could yield 1,100 units.

Eight office building owners have responded to the city’s “request for information” aiming to identify landlords interested in converting their San Francisco properties to apartments or condos, according to the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

Five of the buildings are in the greater Mid-Market and Civic Center neighborhoods, two are in the Financial District and one is near Yerba Buena.

All of them are aging: they were built between 1900 and 1967, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The combined square footage of the eight buildings totals less than 1M SF.

The city estimates that if all eight properties were converted from office to residential, it would create about 1,100 new apartment units, with the largest building yielding 300 units and the smallest about 40.

The city agreed to keep the addresses of the buildings confidential because existing tenants could be impacted. The Office of Economic and Workforce Development is conducting one-on-one interviews with the eight property owners.

Anne Taupier, the city’s economic development director, told the Chronicle the city interprets the response to its request for information as an indication that an increasing number of landlords have concluded that the persistence of remote work has rendered some older office buildings obsolete.

“We were pleased with the responses, it was more than we had expected and there was a good variety of buildings,” Taupier told the newspaper. “We think there is a chance to see some game-changing activation.”

Taupier indicated that the eight respondents own buildings that are vacant, partially vacant or have tenants with expiring leases who may not renew. She described the request for information as a “fact-finding mission” to give the city a better understanding of the financial or bureaucratic obstacles that stand in the way of office conversions.

She said most of the aging properties would be candidates for Mills Act tax credits, which allow cities to reduce taxes for 10 years or more to owners of historic properties.

Specifically, the economic development director said the city wanted to identify “financial shortfalls” hampering conversions and to determine solutions either in the form of new legislation or ballot initiatives.

San Francisco has been easing zoning regulation and lowering fees to try to spur office-to-resi conversions. State Sen. Scott Weiner has announced that he plans to introduce legislation in January creating tax breaks for conversion projects, incentives that will be part of a downtown revitalization bill.

The post Workplace Constructing Homeowners Line Up for Conversions in San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

San Francisco criticized for slow and costly permitting process in new state report on housing

San Francisco criticized for slow and costly permitting process in new state report on housing

01:39

SAN FRANCISCO — A scathing new report from the state reveals the bureaucratic and costly permitting process builders face when it comes to constructing new housing in San Francisco.

The first-of-its-kind report issued Wednesday by the California Department of Housing and Community Development is calling out San Francisco for making things extremely difficult for people trying to create more housing.

“According to self-reported Annual Progress Report (APR) data and prior research from the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), San Francisco has the longest timelines in the state for advancing a housing project from submittal to construction,” the report said.

So far this year, San Francisco has permitted less than one home per day, leaving the city falling far short of its Regional Housing Needs Allocation goals for building new houses.

The report revealed it takes about 523 days for a developer to get a housing project approved compared to 385 days for the next slowest jurisdiction in the state.

After the approval process, its even worse. It takes San Francisco an average of 605 days to issue a building permit.
It takes 418 days for the next slowest jurisdiction.

The report also found that at least 18 city policies and practices are out of compliance with state law. The result is that many of the people who work in the city — including teachers, police officers and firefighters — can’t afford to live in San Francisco.  

State Senator Scott Weiner has been a huge proponent for affordable housing. He released a statement in response to the report. It said, in part, “This audit puts cities across California on notice: there will be no more leniency for illegally obstructing housing construction. San Francisco has added layer upon layer of unnecessary discretion and bureaucracy for decades.”

The mayor’s office says she agrees with the criticism. Mayor Breed claimed that proposed reforms at San Francisco City Hall have been met with “pushback and resistance.”

She is calling on the Board of Supervisors to work with her on changing legislation.  

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The clock tower rises above the Ferry Building, 2021, San Francisco.. Image © Noah Berger.

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https://www.archdaily.com/1009889/san-franciscos-love-affair-with-the-ferry-building

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

Can telling the story of one building tell a larger story about the city it’s a part of? That’s the central premise of John King’s engaging new book, Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities (W.W. Norton). The long-time urban design critic for the San Francisco Chronicle has written a brisk, lively history of this beloved edifice, which opened in 1898 and served as the principal gateway to the city until the emergence of the automobile (and the bridges that served them).

For decades it sat largely empty and neglected, cordoned off by the Embarcadero Freeway. After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the damaged highway was eventually removed, freeing up the Ferry Building, which was given new life as a transportation hub, food hall, and office building. Last week I talked to King about the genesis for the book, the terminal’s seminal importance to the city of San Francisco, and the threat it faces from rising sea levels.

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Martin C. Pedersen: You grew up in the Bay Area. You saw the building long before you had a professional interest in it. Do you have a lifelong connection to it? 

John King: Yes, but it didn’t register with me as a young person. I grew up in the East Bay, and San Francisco had already built the Embarcadero Freeway. It had modern buildings going up. It’s funny. There’s an SOM building for Alcoa that faces the water, a black-slab exoskeleton from the late ’60s. And I remember sitting as a kid in the backseat of my parents’ car, thinking: What a cool building. That’s what I remember noticing, not the Ferry Building.

The Ferry Building in the early 1950s. Image © San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

MCP: At that point, the Ferry Building was blocked by the highway.

JK: But I did see it, because I was coming over on the Bay Bridge. I went to college at UC Berkeley, and the Embarcadero Freeway was what you drove onto to go to the rock clubs in North Beach. So I have dim memories of the Ferry Building growing up. But then, in the early ’90s, when I started at the Chronicle, the Embarcadero Freeway had come down. Writing about planning and development, I got fascinated by this relic of a building, sitting there in sorry shape, a beat-up old building that happened to have a clock tower on top. But the location on the waterfront was remarkable, and encountering the building on foot made for great fun. At one point, then-Mayor Willie Brown proposed putting the de Young Art Museum into the Ferry Building.

MCP: I’m not sure that would’ve worked.

JK: There are so many ways that it wouldn’t have. This was more of a trial balloon. Here’s this building that everyone says is a treasure, yet no one had any idea what to do with it. When it was redone, I went to an event a few months before it opened, a big American Institute of Architects dinner, and I remember being knocked out at how incredible it was inside. That’s when it really registered on me: This isn’t just a historic building renovation. They were making the building a key part of San Francisco’s future.

MCP: The book’s argument is that you can tell the story of San Francisco through the history of this building.

JK: Very much so. I’m fascinated by how certain buildings go through changes that are emblematic of the larger forces in the city where they reside. When you look deeply at the Ferry Building, you can read the story of urban renewal, the story of shifting transportation patterns. You can discern the political changes and the damage done to American cities in the ’60s and ’70s. And just by looking at the tenants in the building, you can see the different kinds of social and cultural strands that have shaped the San Francisco of today. So many threads of history intersect with and lace through the building.

The Embarcadero Freeway, being dismantled; the scene outside the Ferry Building, 1991.. Image © Darius Aidala. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

MCP: You have a section at the end of the book where you talk about what makes an icon. There are a lot of old buildings, but they’re not all beloved. Why did this one travel so well over time?

JK: The iconicity of the building ties back to a lot of the original decisions around it, which were: “We’re going to build a building that marks the entry point into San Francisco from the rest of the country. Therefore, we want this to be at the most powerful place it can be, in terms of your perception of San Francisco.” The building was sited not only on the waterfront, but at the foot of Market Street, which was the city’s major boulevard. They put a big clock tower on it, because they wanted the building to be a visual marker. So if you’re coming into San Francisco from miles away, you see this landmark that gets bigger and bigger. That was conscious from the beginning.

The building extended out into the water, with the different ferry slips. There were these beautiful waiting rooms, and two incredible staircases that deposited you right at the foot of Market Street. The whole idea was a sequence of dramatic arrival and departure, and those physical elements endure today. And even though there’s a big skyline behind it, the building is still separate from other things. Lower Manhattan has lots of great old buildings, but they’re lost in the blur of other old and new buildings. The Woolworth Building is hard to see.

MCP: And at one point that was the tallest building in the world.

JK: Exactly. Whereas the Ferry Building, through all the changes, is still this dramatic imposing piece there. For many people, it was such a part of their lives during its heyday. That fueled their memories and affection—everybody had a story connected to it. And then in all the fights over how San Francisco would grow and how it would physically change, it was always an easy reference point to point to and say, “We have to save this, it represents what this city has been and should be. We can’t let it become just another American city.”

Bay Bridge under construction. Image © San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

MCP: The building is an engineering marvel that survived not one but two earthquakes. Talk about the research you did for that section of the book, because you’re not an engineer. Where did you get all the information about the pilings and the crazy stuff they did to shore it up?

JK: One of the things I most enjoyed about doing the book is, I’m a history major and love going through old documents. San Francisco has wonderful research institutions in it. The public library has a great history room. The California Historical Society has its research library here. I’d find articles describing the building, and see that it had 5,017 piles of Oregon pine. Then you dig through and discover that the first shipment was on a monster raft that capsized, and so they all floated away. Once I had the parameters of what I needed to know, I could look at the biennial reports from the board of State Harbor commissioners, which always had lengthy updates on how the project was going. Another remarkable document that was so important to me was this fat, two-volume scrapbook kept by the architect of the building, Arthur Paige Brown, and his family.

A diagram from the. Image © Engineering News, July 29, 1897

MCP: Oh, wow. How did you know that existed?

JK: I was searching the files at the California Historical Society, doing various keyword searches, and the scrapbook popped up. I thought, I gotta look at that! I plunge in and find out the family has compiled these two gigantic scrapbooks. There were articles from the first buildings he did in New York; anything that mentioned what he was doing, the family would clip and save it. One of those two volumes is pretty much just the Ferry Building. There were five competing newspapers. There was national interest. And I started reading all these stories, and they were such glimpses into the social norms of the era.

It’s striking how so much of the political discourse is no different than today. Every argument ever thrown against a big public infrastructure project was thrown against the Ferry Building: it’s a boondoggle,; it’s too expensive; it’s unsafe; the architect’s a crook. The same things get trotted out. And they were all there on this yellowing paper, well preserved. In one article, Brown says to a newspaper reporter, “My family keeps a scrapbook of every article about me,” and I’m reading it in the scrapbook! Then, once it opened, the building became such a popular cultural symbol of San Francisco that it appeared on dozens and dozens of postcards, and on so many brochures and magazines of the era.

MCP: That obviously shifted over time. At some point in the ’70s the Transamerica Building went up.

JK: As soon as the Golden Gate Bridge went up, that became the icon for San Francisco, for many good reasons, both functional and aesthetic.

MCP: Of course.

JK: With the Pyramid, it was pretty much, “Wow, we’re the only city in America that has a building like this!” Planners were so upset the building got approved that they subsequently downzoned everything around it. But in the process, they left it stranded at the end of the financial district. It gets the Ferry Building treatment of being an isolated object.

MCP: And that zoning holds today?

JK: Absolutely. The fear when the Pyramid went up was, “Oh, my god, these things are now going to march up Columbus Avenue into North Beach and Telegraph Hill and the waterfront.” So the planning that followed tamped down heights north of Washington Street. Now you’ve got the Transamerica Pyramid that’s 853 feet high, and across the street directly to the north, buildings ranging from two to four stories that are all from the late 1800s, early 1900s.

The Transamerica Pyramid, as seen from Columbus Avenue, 1971. Image © San Francisco Chronicle

MCP: How’s the Ferry Building doing post-covid?

JK: The Ferry Building, like everything else, was really set on its heels by the pandemic. It never quite closed, other than the initial shelter-in-place stuff. It never closed as nonessential, because it was deemed to be a transportation facility. The building had a lot of vacancies in 2020 and 2021, and then things came back in 2022. There are still vacancies now, but very few compared to what we see in other parts of the city.

MCP: It’s still a foodie mecca. Who goes there now, besides ferry passengers? Is it tourists or locals?

JK: It’s a really heartening mix. The tourists go there because people have all heard about it, but it’s also a place that younger people love. It’s got the farmer’s market, which by all accounts does as well as it did before the pandemic. The Ferry Building was never completely lost to the tourist zone the way that so many festival marketplaces from the ’70s and ’80s were—places that had their time and then either flopped or became tourist places. The Ferry Building is much more part of the workaday, experiential city than, say, Faneuil Hall in Boston or Navy Pier in Chicago.

Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, 2006.. Image © Michael Macor/ San Francisco Chronicle

MCP: The last chapters of the book are a coda about the future, and they involve sea-level rise and the threat it poses. You end a chapter giving the unofficial poet laureate of San Francisco, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the last word. “In 50 years,” he says, “it will all be underwater.” Do you share his view?

JK: I think Ferlinghetti was being poetic. That’s not going to happen. But the question of sea-level rise is real, and it’s one that every city that has reclaimed its industrial waterfront in dramatic ways will have to contend with.

, Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities / John King. Image Courtesy of John King

MCP: Which is almost every waterfront city.

JK: Exactly. They’re all facing aspects of this. If the sea level rises 3 feet, water would not wash into the Ferry Building every day. But once you start adding big storms and king tides, it really gets propulsive. There are parts of the Embarcadero that are even lower, and they’re already having real strain. Assuming that the projections are accurate—and not the most drastic ones—then the question becomes, looking out 50 or 60 years: How do you keep the waterfront functioning?

MCP: There are going to be hard decisions, all over the coast. There will be towns that will be defensible, others that probably won’t be defensible. 

JK: I think everyone wants to put it off by having study after study and then concluding, “Boy, someday this is gonna be bad!” That’s confronting San Francisco very starkly. Ferlinghetti may have been taking a little bit of poetic license, but some variation of that prognostication does face the city, the Embarcadero, and the Ferry Building.

MCP: This is an interestingly timed book. Fox News has decided that San Francisco is the poster child for Liberal City Dysfunction. We hear talk of “doom loops.” As a close observer of the city, where is San Francisco right now? What’s happening on the ground, separate from the propaganda?

JK: Oh, boy. It’s a city that in a lot of ways feels like it’s dusting itself off and getting back into the groove it once knew. I see more places reopening, more people in restaurants and bars. A lot of neighborhoods are in great shape. Recently I did a large piece about North Beach, where it honestly feels better than it did in 2019. That’s a place where the old precepts of urbanism, those strong bones, that urban DNA, came in handy in terms of adapting to the pandemic. The neighborhood had been seen as a little long in the tooth and getting too touristy. But it’s become a vibrant place again.

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SAN FRANCISCO — A scathing new report from the state reveals the bureaucratic and costly permitting process builders face when it comes to constructing new housing in San Francisco.

The first-of-its-kind report issued Wednesday by the California Department of Housing and Community Development is calling out San Francisco for making things extremely difficult for people trying to create more housing.

“According to self-reported Annual Progress Report (APR) data and prior research from the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), San Francisco has the longest timelines in the state for advancing a housing project from submittal to construction,” the report said.

So far this year, San Francisco has permitted less than one home per day, leaving the city falling far short of its Regional Housing Needs Allocation goals for building new houses.

The report revealed it takes about 523 days for a developer to get a housing project approved compared to 385 days for the next slowest jurisdiction in the state.

After the approval process, its even worse. It takes San Francisco an average of 605 days to issue a building permit.
It takes 418 days for the next slowest jurisdiction.

The report also found that at least 18 city policies and practices are out of compliance with state law. The result is that many of the people who work in the city — including teachers, police officers and firefighters — can’t afford to live in San Francisco.  

State Senator Scott Weiner has been a huge proponent for affordable housing. He released a statement in response to the report. It said, in part, “This audit puts cities across California on notice: there will be no more leniency for illegally obstructing housing construction. San Francisco has added layer upon layer of unnecessary discretion and bureaucracy for decades.”

The mayor’s office says she agrees with the criticism. Mayor Breed claimed that proposed reforms at San Francisco City Hall have been met with “pushback and resistance.”

She is calling on the Board of Supervisors to work with her on changing legislation.  

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SAN FRANCISCO — The Port of San Francisco and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are planning on raising the iconic, historic Ferry Building by as much as seven feet.

The daring plan is an attempt to combat the impacts of sea level rise and extreme weather, both triggered by the climate change, and our warming planet.

How the SF Ferry Building will be raised

“We’re already seeing flooding on the Embarcadero. We know that the Bay is rising; we know that it will continue to rise”, explained Port of San Francisco Director Elaine Forbes.

Earlier this year, according to the United Nation-backed International Panel of Climate Change or IPCC for short, the planet is rapidly approaching a catastrophic threshold of heating. NOAA is tracking the melting of glaciers and ice sheets, as well as the rising ocean waters.

“Humanity is on thin ice, and that ice is melting fast,” said Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres in a recent address.

Port of San Francisco officials have held a series of public meetings with stakeholders along the 7.5 miles of bay coastline under the Port’s control. One neighborhood includes the Ferry Building.

The feedback was clear: those who work and/or live along the Embarcadero waterfront want to see the landmark Ferry Building remain on site and functioning. Currently, it is home to six ferry piers, used by millions of commuters and tourists each year. The Ferry Building also houses 44 different shops and restaurants as well as a world-famous Farmer’s Market.

And less known, it’s 2nd and 3rd floors have 190,000 square feet of offices and meeting spaces.

Port Engineer and member of the Water Resilience Team Steve Reel joined Juliette Goodrich in the CBS News Bay Area Virtual Set and in an exclusive report, demonstrated on how the Port and the U.S. Corps of Engineers are planning on raising the huge landmark.

The project will break ground in about a decade. The U.S. Corps will pick up 65% of the cost.

San Francisco’s Prop A — which was passed by 82.7% of voters in 2018 — authorized $425 million general obligation bonds that will partially fund the Waterfront Resilience Program. That includes funding improvements for earthquake safety of the three-mile long Embarcadero Seawall, near-term flood protection improvements, and planning for other long-term resilience.  

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Juliette Goodrich

Emmy award winning reporter and Bay Area native Juliette Goodrich joined KPIX 5 in 1997 and has performed a variety of anchoring and reporting assignments during her time with the station. She is currently the weekend nighttime anchor.

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