But across the country, San Francisco offers an intriguing counterpoint: distinctive architecture is conspicuously lacking in the high-rise building boom.

Forty years after it was completed, the 850-foot Transamerica Pyramid remains the most recognizable high-rise tower built in the City by the Bay. Designed by the architect William Pereira, it took a lot of flak from locals during its planning and construction, with detractors sometimes referring to it as a phallic symbol, though their actual wording was more blunt.

Nevetheless, it became a fixture of the city’s skyline. Today it stands mostly alone in a city more interested in conserving its old Victorian-style homes than in making a statement with new development. It is a puzzling phenomenon in a part of the country often seen as an engine of American innovation.

“People work hard to preserve old things without taking the risk to build something new,” Mr. Gehry said about San Francisco in a recent phone conversation.

He was critical of the high-rise building boom under way in San Francisco’s South of Market area, where the newly built towers are boxy and utilitarian. “It’s business without heart,” he said.

In the past decade, 13 high-rise condo towers of 20 stories or more have been built in San Francisco. Another four such projects have been approved by the city, according to the Mark Company, a real estate marketing and sales firm.

There is nary a brand-name architecture firm to be found among the towers that have already been built, though Handel Architects did design the sleek Millennium Tower. A new luxury high-rise being designed by Richard Meier is still struggling to get approved by the city after almost five years of development.

The new buildings South of Market are meant to attract singles and young couples, many of whom are working in the tech industry and don’t yet want the hassles of a single-family home. And while higher-end offerings like the Millennium have attracted a few prominent locals — like the former 49ers quarterback Joe Montana — foreigners, especially from China, make up a large chunk of the buyers.

At the Madrone, another high-rise in the newly developed neighborhood of Mission Bay, a young techie apartment owner I spoke with said that the architecture of the building had never really been a consideration.

That doesn’t surprise Mr. Stern, who doesn’t see young tech buyers as having the sophistication to care about buildings (though, it must be said, they may have refined tastes in the subtle design touches of the latest smartphones). “I think it takes them awhile to get over the initial high-dose blast of wealth to realize that wealth can be used more creatively than just buying big shoebox spaces and sticking in foosball games and other things like that,” Mr. Stern said.

The young software engineers may not care too much about the quality of architecture where they live, but down in Silicon Valley some big tech firms have tapped world-renowned architects to design their new headquarters.

Facebook hired Mr. Gehry, 83, for the expansion of its campus in Menlo Park. Mr. Gehry designed a 433,555-square-foot building with a rooftop garden that will be built on stilts. “It should look like a floating forest where the building peeks from beneath a series of trees,” said Slater Tow, a Facebook spokesman. “We are not out to make an architectural statement, we are out to make the most functional building for engineers.”

It was Steve Jobs himself who commissioned Sir Norman Foster to design Apple’s new 2.8-million-square-foot headquarters in Cupertino, which Mr. Jobs described as a “spaceship.”

Both the Apple and Facebook projects are expected to be completed by the end of 2015.

But just a commute away in San Francisco, there is little buzz about big-name designers. “San Francisco is not a place where people shout architects’ names on a building,” said Mary Comerio, a professor in the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. “You get more controversy when that happens.”

Indeed, developers in San Francisco are loath to take architectural risks because the city’s approval process for new development is long and rigorous, perhaps the most onerous in the country, architects say.

It’s hard to fault their caution when you consider how small San Francisco really is — 47 square miles (Manhattan alone is 23 square miles) — with much of the area consumed by neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes. More than the pedigree of the architect, the city worries about things like shadows and wind and, of course, earthquakes.

The earthquake issue is not as tough to navigate as you might think, but it is still a costly concern. The Bay Area remains highly susceptible to earthquakes, and “seismic readiness” can add as much as 15 percent to the cost of a new structure, said Mark Sarkisian, director of seismic and structural engineering in the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings Merrill, which built the John Hancock Center and Sears (now Willis) Tower in Chicago.

Not surprisingly, the science of engineering tall buildings has come a long way in the last 20 years. The structures have special joints to dissipate energy without fracturing during a quake. They can bend, almost like a fishing pole.

In the South of Market area, the sandy soil creates a bigger risk if a big one hits. So developers need to dig foundations 100 to 125 feet deep, Mr. Sarkisian said.

All the engineering advances have made newer high-rises less susceptible to collapse than lower-rise brick structures being held together by gravity, experts say.

But it hasn’t been fear of earthquakes that has held up the approval of a residential tower being designed by Mr. Meier’s firm for the corner of Market Street and Van Ness Avenue. City planners were concerned about how an early design for the building, currently scheduled to have 37 floors, would affect wind conditions for pedestrians, said Bernhard Karpf, an associate partner at Richard Meier Partners, who is in charge of the project.

“They describe that area as having ‘hazardous wind conditions,’ where people would literally get blown off the street,” Mr. Karpf said.

The developer David Choo asked Mr. Meier in 2009 to do something that was “not your traditional San Francisco architecture,” Mr. Karpf said. Meier Partners initially designed a “free-standing sculptural object” on the small site. With approval threatened, the firm hired a Canadian company to test a scale model in a wind tunnel, delaying the design process by another year.

“We had never heard of these kinds of wind regulations,” Mr. Karpf said. “It became almost obsessive on the planning board’s side to make sure wind is mitigated.”

Their frustration mounting, the Meier architects asked the Canadian company to give them three or four shapes that would meet the wind requirements. “We have to move forward,” Mr. Karpf said he told them. “We have to find a solution that works. It may look horrible, but let’s see if we can reverse the process and turn it into a building.”

In the end, the slender shape of the building “was strongly influenced” by studies in the wind tunnel laboratory, which showed that it would “actually improve wind conditions in this part of town,” he said.

When Mr. Karpf asked Mr. Choo how he could stand to buy a property and still have nothing to show for it some five years later, he shrugged and told the architect, “That’s the way it works in San Francisco.”

Follow Alexei Barrionuevo on Twitter: @alexeinyt.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/realestate/big-deal-in-san-francisco-life-without-starchitects.html?pagewanted=all

A map at the bottom of a Craigslist ad shows the location of a “spacious” townhouse in San Francisco’s South of Market district.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)

Not long after Craigslist cut off a mapping app that tapped its housing data, the popular online bulletin board has quietly begun embedding maps in certain real estate listings.

The maps, which appear on housing ads in the San Francisco Bay Area and Portland, Ore., harness data from OpenStreetMap, a service that offers free maps of the world compiled and edited by volunteers.

The new feature emerges a little more than a month after Craigslist sued PadMapper, an apartment listings aggregator that collects listings from Craigslist and other services and displays them on a Google map. Craigslist, which has become a popular portal for apartment ads, sued PadMapper and the data harvester it uses — 3taps — on copyright infringement grounds.

The battle began in June when Craigslist sent PadMapper a cease-and-desist letter that claimed the app violated its terms of use, which prohibit “copying, aggregation, display, distribution, performance, or derivative use of Craigslist or any content posted on Craigslist.”

For a short while PadMapper took Craigslist data off its site, but then earlier this month, it said it would resume using the data after it discovered a workaround PadMapper creator Eric DeMenthon described as “somewhat dickish” but “legally kosher.”

The solution was provided by 3taps, which created an API that harvests data from Craigslist postings by “indirect means,” meaning they aren’t subject to the Internet bulletin board’s terms of use.

Craigslist responded with a lawsuit filed in San Francisco’s federal court, accusing the two companies of “unlawfully and unabashedly mass-harvesting and redistributing postings entrusted by Craigslist users to their local Craigslist sites.”

CNET has contacted Craigslist for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

Article source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57501390-93/craigslist-begins-embedding-maps-in-real-estate-listings/

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) March 05, 2012

This past Friday, February 24th, Climb Real Estate Group, a full-service general real estate brokerage serving the San Francisco Bay Area, celebrated an accomplished and successful past year. Climb would especially like to honor their hard working Top 11 Producers of 2011. These incredible Top 11 Producers were invited to commemorate their achievements at Book Club, a private venue located in downtown San Francisco. Top Producers are recognized not only by the amount of real estate that they are successfully able to market and sell but the satisfaction of their clients.

“It is an honor to be recognized as a 2011 Top Producer by the most progressive, enthusiastic and successful Real Estate firm in San Francisco’s South Beach and SOMA market place. CLIMB is all about working hard, playing hard and we all seem to thoroughly enjoy this business” said Brian Anderson, Senior Sales Associate and one of the Top 11.

Climb’s Top 11 for 2011

• Mark Choey, Senior Sales Associate and Climb Co-Founder
• Marcus Lee, Sales Director and Top Producer 2010
• Dirk Kinley, Senior Broker Associate and Top 1% Producer 2010
• Kristen Stuecher, Senior Sales Associate and First Time Top Producer
• Brian Anderson, Senior Sales Associate and Honor Circle Award as Sales Leader 2010
• Gertrude Villanueva, Senior Broker Associate and Top 10 San Francisco Agent 2011
• Kevin Gueco, Senior Sales Associate and First Time Top Producer
• Joshua Lawrence, Broker Associate and Top Producer 2010
• Matt Finley, Senior Associate and One Rincon Hill Specialist
• Tiffany Combs, Managing Broker and Climb Co-Founder
• Jessie Lee, Senior Associate and Rookie of the Year 2010

Climb would also like to recognize the entire immensely hard-working team. For 2011 Climb Real Estate Groups combined sales totaled over $100 million.

About Climb Real Estate Group: Climb Real Estate Group is a full-service general real estate brokerage with an emphasis on the purchase, sale, rental and marketing of select residential new developments, commercial and premier resale properties. We specialize in condos, high rises, lofts and homes in South Beach, SOMA, South Beach, Mission Bay, Rincon Hill, Potrero Hill and Central Waterfront. Our focus is on urban-style properties, specializing in new construction, historic loft conversions, live/work spaces, Victorian flats, modern condominiums, and stylish single-family homes. We also have exclusive access to Off-Market Listings, Foreclosures and Developer Specials.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: www.prweb.com/releases/prwebclimbsf/top11/prweb9235920.htm

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/03/05/prweb9235920.DTL

Share

Reprints

Disable this ad

Join the thousands of real estate professionals that subscribe to the California AM Alert. Each and every morning, we deliver the important stories, data, analysis?as well as the opinions and insights of industry thought leaders to provide you with market intelligence and a daily business advantage.

Become a registered member today and don?t miss another important story in the California market. Let GlobeSt.com be your source for everything real estate.

At GlobeSt.com, we are passionate about bringing you the best possible user experience. We listened to your feedback and now offer the ability to access information on GlobeSt.com without interruptions! Supercharge your viewing experience by disabling these ads.

Sign Up Today

Riverbed Technology will relocate
to floors two through six
at 680 Folsom St. with
a 10-year lease term.

(Mark Your Calendars: RealShare REAL ESTATE 2012, March 22^nd in Los Angeles).

SAN FRANCISCO-TMG Partners and financial partner Rockwood Capital LLC have signed a 167,788-square-foot lease to relocate Riverbed Technology to 680 Folsom St., a class A office building in San Francisco’s South of Market District near the Moscone Convention Center. Riverbed, currently at 199 Fremont St., will move into floors two through six at 680 Folsom St. with a 10-year lease term.

David Churton, headquarter practice leader and international director at Jones Lang LaSalle, represented the tenant. He points out that the Riverbed real estate team “took a very strategic approach to their future real estate requirements.” He explains that by being proactive, “they executed a headquarters strategy ahead of today’s constricted market and netted a superb block of quality space offering the flexibility to accommodate growth as well as excellent terms and prominent signage in what will be the finest redevelopment in San Francisco in the last decade.”

According to Mayor Ed Lee of San Francisco, “Riverbed’s long term commitment to keep their worldwide headquarters in San Francisco through 2024 demonstrates once again that we are the location of choice for high tech companies. With dynamic leaders like Riverbed’s Jerry Kennelly, we are making San Francisco the ‘Innovation Capitol of the World.’”

According to a recently tech report from JLL, San Francisco is the top high-tech industry growth market with the most impacted office market. Booming high-tech industry employment growth of more than 15 percent is creating strong demand for office space and has boosted rents 18.5 percent over the past 12 months. Stiff competition between tenants for the best quality space is moving market rents toward pre-recession highs in some buildings and causing high-tech firms that prefer South of Market Street to head north into the CBD. The excitement has drifted into the capital markets space and investors are snapping up properties at rates last seen in 2007. The resurgence in high-tech is electrifying not only San Francisco, but the entire Bay Area.

According to Michael Covarrubias, chairman and CEO of TMG Partners, “Riverbed is the ideal tenant not only for this space, but to complement the increasing tech growth in San Francisco’s SoMa area.” GlobeSt.com could not get further lease terms, like aggregate lease value, asking rent or taking rent by deadline. An unidentified source not involved in the deal says base rent is approximately $50 to $54 per square foot per annum.

According to Riverbed co-founder and CEO Kennelly, “we think the City is the right location to attract the best talent and provide a thriving environment for our current employees. Moving to a state of the art building in the heart of the City will be a great move for our company.”

With construction now underway, the 12-story mid-rise tower at 680 Folsom St. and adjacent three -story building at 50 Hawthorne St. will be fully renovated to Class A standards. The $87-million renovation, supported by TMG and set for completion in late 2013, calls for 680 Folsom St.’s existing 1960′s concrete exterior to be replaced with a clear glass curtain wall skin.

In addition, a two-story vertical addition and several small horizontal additions will also be added to the building, “increasing the gross building area by more than 100,000 square feet for a total of approximately 522,000 square feet,” according to a prepared statement.

All building systems will be replaced and a new public plaza will be built on the corner of Folsom and Third streets, where there eventually will be a new 15,000-square-foot retail or cultural building constructed, says the release. A new glass, steel and granite lobby will have 30-foot ceilings with floor-to-ceiling glass and a floating staircase. The property is pursuing LEED Gold certification.

Pacific Bell owned and occupied the headquarters facility until 2007. In October 2010, TMG recapitalized the development with a new equity partner in Rockwood Capital.

Categories:

West,
Office,
Leasing,
San Francisco

Natalie Dolce Natalie Dolce, editor of the West Coast region for GlobeSt.com and Real Estate Forum, is responsible for coverage of news and information pertaining to that vital real estate region. Prior to moving out to the Southern California office, Natalie was Northeast bureau chief, covering New York City for GlobeSt.com. Dolce?s background includes a stint at InStyle Magazine, and as managing editor with New York Press, an alternative weekly New York City paper. In her career, she has also covered a variety of beats Arthur Frommer?s Budget Travel magazine, FashionLedge.com, Co-Ed magazine, and has also freelanced for a number of publications including MSNBC.com and Museums New York magazine. Contact Natalie Dolce.

Article source: http://www.globest.com/news/12_280/sanfrancisco/office/87M-Renovated-Building-Gets-First-167788-SF-Tenant-318417.html