The Untold Story: How Yerba Buena Became A Real Neighborhood
TODCO Group
Over 50 Years of South Of Market Neighborhood Building and San Francisco Civic Impact.
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50 years ago the founders of South of Market’s Tenants and Owners Development Corporation, TODCO, the bulldozed tenants of the Yerba Buena Redevelopment Project and their community allies envisioned a new part of downtown that, unlike the City’s Financial District, belonged to all the people of the City, not just the visitor industry and convention hotels.
They proposed a Yerba Buena Gardens and cultural district that was gradually built in the following decades using redevelopment powers and financing. And it is one beautiful centerpiece of downtown San Francisco today.
In 1980 the neighbors and activists joined together again to tell the Redevelopment Agency “We want to be a real neighborhood too.” TODCO drafted a Yerba Buena Neighborhood Plan that called for all the necessary components of an actual neighborhood: a supermarket, safe streets and sidewalks, local shops, health clinics, even a community garden. Most of all, they called for more housing, despite that no housing was included in the original redevelopment plan – which instead called for just hotels and office buildings surrounding a convention center. And to their great credit the new leadership of the Redevelopment Agency, Director Wilbur Hamilton and Project Director Helen Sause, actually listened, and agreed. And the Agnos administration’s 1991 South of Market rezoning plan, spearheaded by TODCO, opened the door to new housing development on the blocks surrounding the redevelopment area.
It took 40 years, a lot of work by all concerned, and many ups and downs, but now, thanks to TODCO’s vision of a genuine neighborhood, today over 11,000 residents live in the overall area’s 9 big SOMA blocks, about 3,000 in 1,700 affordable senior housing apartments and 8,000 more in 3,300 market housing units built since 1980. And more is still on the way, both market and affordable housing.
But new buildings alone are not enough to create a neighborhood. It takes community institutions that become stewards of the neighborhood, that care about the people who live there and the spirit of their community. Today the Yerba Buena Community Benefit District, founded in 2008, provides basic services to maintain downtown’s most livable district and support its many businesses, large and small.
Since 2014 the Yerba Buena Gardens Conservancy & Arts and Events has also operated the beautiful Yerba Buena Gardens, assuring its quality, spirit, and activities for all the people of San Francisco, including the neighborhood children’s playground, tot lot, the South of Market Childcare Center and, soon, even a Dog Spot! The Conservancy is a unique combined city/community nonprofit partnership supported substantially by the Marriot Hotel’s ground lease rent paid to the City. TODCO was key founder of both.
Summing up the outcome of these 40 years of continual and determined neighborhood building, the Benefit District’s CEO Scott Rowitz concludes, “What makes Yerba Buena such a special part of San Francisco’s downtown is the large community of residents from every background who live here. Coupled with our one-of-a-kind museums, cultural, hospitality and commercial attractions, Moscone center and Yerba Buena Gardens, everything together adds up to a diverse and genuine neighborhood within San Francisco’s downtown.”
And this work is not done. One City-owned Yerba Buena site where even more vital neighborhood housing can be developed for thousands more new residents remains, the obsolete Moscone Garage on Third Street. A future 1,000-unit 50% affordable residence here will be the ultimate final piece of the Yerba Buena Neighborhood Plan.
As San Francisco now debates the future of its distressed downtown, many are saying its heartless Financial District, especially, needs to someday to become a real neighborhood of its own. We can learn how to do that from the one part of downtown that actually did it: the Yerba Buena Neighborhood.
To learn more about TODCO’s dedication to civic impact and community building within San Francisco’s South of Market visit our website by clicking the link below!
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