Downtown San Francisco's Recovery: Yerba Buena is a Place to Begin
TODCO Group
Over 50 Years of South Of Market Neighborhood Building and San Francisco Civic Impact.
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Almost 50 years the leadership of Mayor George Moscone convinced all of San Francisco to embrace a “grand Yerba Buena compromise” vision of a new convention center (now Moscone Center) for the City’s visitor industry combined with a beautiful Yerba Buena Gardens for all the People of the City. And just ten years later the Redevelopment Agency, TODCO, and community stakeholders again all agreed to an even more ambitious compromise vision of building a new civic arts center (now the Museum of Modern Art, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and the Center for the Arts) in Yerba Buena along with a future Yerba Buena residential Neighborhood surrounding it all – now home to 13,000 San Franciscans of all backgrounds, including 2000 seniors.
But realizing all the possibilities of these big visions and grand compromises from decades ago has never been completed. And now that Downtown San Francisco, which surrounds this Yerba Buena Neighborhood, is in civic distress here is where a next generation of renewed Yerba Buena community building can make a real difference for Downtown San Francisco’s future.
These seven major revitalizing Yerba Buena Neighborhood projects are realistic and do-able within the next 10-15 years:
1. Build More Housing To Add More Downtown Residents: All agree more Downtown housing is the key to its future. The obsolete and unneeded SFMTA Third Street Garage site is an excellent site to build 1000 new housing units, with 50% affordable.
2. Build New Affordably-Priced Exhibition Space For More Public Exhibitions And Events: Regional trade shows and local expositions of many kinds, holiday fairs and celebrations and much more cannot use Moscone Center, which is prioritized and priced for national conventions, even though they would draw tens of thousands of visitors to Downtown every year. The aged and underused SFMTA Fifth And Mission Garage is an excellent site to cost-effectively build a new 100,000 sq ft Moscone Exhibition Hall with parking above to meet this local/regional event market demand that Moscone Center doesn’t accommodate.
3. Add Yerba Buena Gardens Betterments: The 30 year old Gardens plan left several potential improvement locations unfinished. The East Garden’s potential to become an active forecourt for landmark MOMA across Third Street can be realized. The empty and unusable lawn swale next to the Ice Rink could become a fun bocce ball court for all ages. And the ornamental Market Street Yerba Buena entry archway originally planned as its symbolic entrance 40 years ago could finally be built.
4. Fully-Realize Yerba Buena Cultural Institutions Potential: Both the 20 year old Museum of the African Diaspora and the long-planned Mexican/Meso-American Museum are under-resourced and have not achieved their hoped-for potential. All agree arts institutions are a key element for Downtown’s future, and these two in Yerba Buena are ready now, if adequately supported, to play an important part in just a few years.
5. Expand Community Events At Yerba Buena Gardens: The Yerba Buena Festival schedules wonderful public entertainment in the Gardens throughout the year. But few community groups citywide take full advantage of this venue for their own fairs, celebrations, and special events, which would draw thousands more to Downtown every month. The Yerba Buena Community Benefit District can financially assist that with modest grants to San Francisco community groups of all kinds.
6. Create A San Francisco City College Nonprofit Arts Center: The 40 year old Downtown Community College Center at Fourth and Mission Streets is underutilized. Its eight floors of space could become a bustling nonprofit arts center for dozens of city arts groups of all kinds that need inexpensive space and want permanent homes together Downtown.
7. Finish The San Francisco History Museum: Finally complete the transformation of the Old US Mint at Fifth and Mission Streets into the Dianne Feinstein San Francisco History Museum. San Francisco is the only major American city without a first class city history museum. But a substantial federal investment is necessary to fully restore this national landmark and make that possible. It is a longtime failure of civic leadership that this magnificent opportunity, just a block from the Fifth and Market Cable Car Turnaround, the very heart of San Francisco tourism, has remained unfinished for decades.
All together these seven projects will finally realize the full potentials of these existing Yerba Buena Neighborhood locations and civic assets, and fully capture and bring to life the urban vibrancy that has always been the essence of the Yerba Buena Vision since its inception in the heat of civic controversy and division 50 long years ago. Yerba Buena community building has always been the “right” way to build our City’s Downtown. It’s just not finished yet.
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