The lack of public outrage over the proposed construction of two 66-story view-blocking towers at Rincon Hill next to the Bay Bridge marks a dramatic shift in the city’s political history. Since the 1970’s San Francisco’s political fault lines were divided over highrise development, with ballot measures to limit growth failing in 1979 and 1983 before winning in 1986. But with developers poised to replicate Manhattan’s luxury condo towers, organized opposition to the Rincon Hill projects is nowhere to be found.
San Francisco has a long tradition of imposing height limitations to protect waterfront views. In response to an eleven story apartment proposed in 1956 for the corner of Montgomery and Union, the Telegraph Hill Dwellers won enactment of a forty foot height limit for the downtown side of Telegraph Hill.After the construction of the notorious Fontana Apartments near Aquatic Park, residents led by former Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger won an extension of this limit along the Embarcadero.
In 1971,the San Francisco Bay Guardian published The Ultimate Highrise, which it described as “the world’s first comprehensive study of the true cost of skyscrapers.” Guardian founder Bruce Brugmann was the lead author of the book, which
includes a plethora of charts and graphs that once typified the paper’s analyses.
From the late 1970’s to 1986, anti-highrise sentiment fueled and often defined progressive politics in San Francisco.
Progressives argued that highrise development imposed unfunded housing and transit burdens on San Francisco. Taxpayers were forced to pick up the costs of creating a transit system for getting employees in highrises to their downtown workplaces, while the increased demand for housing caused by the influx of white-collar office workers drove up rents and displaced tenants.
Highrises also were criticized for blocking views and creating wind tunnels in a downtown area suddenly vacant on weekends and evenings. Anyone who witnessed the eviction and demolition of thriving ground-floor commercial businesses on Montgomery Street in the early 1980’s can attest how highrises can kill the excitement of downtown streets.
But nearly the entire attack on downtown highrises focused on office development. Luxury condo towers were not proposed for the downtown area until the late 1990’s, and, surprisingly, these projects have encountered almost no opposition from any source.
One theory for this lack of opposition is that those living downtown will not take Muni to work and hence are not a burden on city transit services. Another is that having people live downtown will restore the sense of street level excitement and boost ground-floor retail, both of which were in abundance prior to the city’s proliferation of highrise office buildings.
Moreover, the biggest opposition to projects in San Francisco today comes from surrounding residential neighbors. Since few live next to the proposed towers, the type of neighborhood opposition that mobilizes against a one-story addition in Pacific Heights or Noe Valley has not emerged.
Supporters of the Rincon Hill towers claim the project will, as yesterday’s Examiner editorial put it, transform the area into a “welcoming modern neighborhood” with a “pedestrian-friendly sidewalk scene.” Both the Examiner and John King of the Chronicle view the towers through what they learned in Planning 101 about increased density creating more livable cities.
But there is no reason to believe that the multi-millionaires who purchase these $1.5-$2 million condos will a) spend much time in San Francisco or b) will be heading out to a corner grocery to buy milk when they are in town.
These upscale occupants will enter and leave the building through their private parking garages. They will not create, and are not interested in creating, a neighborhood where kids will come trick or treating on Halloween.
None of the “affordable” units at the towers will be rental. And by the time these units come on line, qualifying buyers will have to earn at least $100,000 per year. Helping this population is not worth having two 66-story towers forever blocking city and waterfront views.
While San Francisco needs to build more market-rate housing, the city does not need to build units for those who already own a home and simply want a crib with a view when they visit San Francisco. Wealthy non-San Franciscans are the market for the luxury towers slated for Rincon Hill.
With the Bush Administration slashing federal housing funds and the defeat of San Francisco’s housing bond, there is a temptation to look to projects like the Rincon towers to meet the city’s affordable housing needs. But it cannot be emphasized often enough that these luxury projects will not produce any affordable rental housing, and will instead provide “affordable” ownership to groups whose income is too high to qualify for most state and federal affordable housing programs.
If Donald Trump came to town proposing to build these two 66-story towers, activists would be denouncing his attempt to wreck San Francisco’s skyline for his own greed. Yet
the only chief objection to the project has been around the lack of community benefits, not the fact that the towers are a monument to a city that cannot say no.
Some of the prior leaders of the anti-highrise movement are still around, but have moved on to other causes. Sue Hestor regularly opposed office towers before the Planning Commission in the 1980’s, and two years ago testified that an 85 foot tall building in the South of Market was hopelessly out of scale. But Hestor is so identified with opposing virtually every for-profit project that she has lost credibility on development issues.
The San Francisco Bay Guardian criticized the Board of Supervisor’s approval of a Rincon Hill condo complex in 2004, and its arguments apply with even greater force to the 66-story towers. But the weekly that helped build the movement against Manhattanization has been unable to similarly galvanize opposition to the erection of highrise condos.
The Ultimate Highrise is long out of print, but I got a copy for 25 cents at a sale last summer. Such is the tenor of the times for the city’s once powerful anti-highrise movement.
