Top: Five 15-foot silver spheres created by Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson are located on Chase Center’s east plaza. The spheres have mirrors facing inwards that create a tunnel effect when left uncovered.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has proposed a “Quick-Build Project” along 17th Street between Rhode Island and Mississippi streets that has local businesses saying, “not so fast.” Quick-Build Projects are intended to streamline delivery of safety improvements, in this case, development of a protected bike lane – consisting of physical barriers to separate…
In Potrero Hill, where face masks are a rare sight, theater groups performing at Potrero Stage and elsewhere still speak of testing protocols, face coverings, and capacity restrictions. “There are theaters that over and over and over have run through not just the understudy, but the understudy’s understudy’s understudy,” said Aldo Billingslea of the Juneteenth…
Last month, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission voted four to one that the shadow from a proposed residential complex wouldn’t significantly impact Potrero Del Sol Park, formerly known as La Raza Park, which abuts the development site. Commissioners Mark Buell, president, and Kat Anderson, vice president, weren’t present. The single “nay” vote came…
District 10 generated $14.53 million in sales tax revenue last year, the third highest district haul, and more than the $14 million collected before the start of the pandemic. District 6, which includes Mission Bay, the Oracle Arena, and South-of-Market produced $17.09 million, compared to $28.3 million in 2019. District 3 – North Beach, Chinatown,…
On November 8 District 10 residents will have a choice between returning incumbent and Board president Shamann Walton to the Board of Supervisors or selecting newcomer Brian Adam. The winner will serve a four-year term starting January 2023. Walton is the clear favorite, having secured endorsements from U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Governor…
“Corn and zucchini have been okay but most other produce has gone up in price,” said José Escobar, The Good Life Grocery’s produce buyer. “I’ve noticed prices have gone up about 20 to 30 percent on certain items.” The last three years have been the driest recorded in California history. A Nature Climate Change study…
The City and County of San Francisco is part of a growing number of local governments that’ve adopted policies to restrict the use of natural gas. As of last year, all new buildings in the City have to be fully electric, with use of gas effectively banned. Sixty local governments in California have approved similar laws.…
The Radiance, a 99-unit condominium building with entrances at 330 Mission Bay Boulevard and 325 China Basin Street, is suing the City for damages caused by subsidence, or sinking. The Radiance Owners Association (ROA) represents the interests of individual condominium owners and oversees common areas, such as sidewalks. Subsidence has been causing problems for years…
On May 19th, shots rang out under the Interstate-280 overpass at Mariposa and Owens streets. An altercation between two unhoused men turned into a roughly nine-minute struggle involving multiple knives that ultimately left both dead from lethal rounds discharged by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD). SFPD provided a detailed breakdown of the officer-involved shooting…
The right-of-way located between San Bruno Avenue, 17th Street and Vermont Street sits atop ancient serpentine bedrock, composed of California’s rare state rock, serpentinite. Homes that once occupied the area were removed in the 1950s to make way for Highway 101. The largely derelict space is soon to emerge as Potrero Gateway Park, part of…
The waterfront dive bar and restaurant, The Ramp, and accompanying boatyard, San Francisco Boatworks, continue to roll on rocky waves with a month-to-month lease. Located on Terry A. Francois Boulevard, the 100,000-square-foot property is the City’s only working boatyard, which makes it crucial for the roughly 500 fishing, police, fire, recreational sailing, and cruising boats…
In 2016 San Francisco hosted Super Bowl 50. Then Mayor Ed Lee ordered the San Francisco Police Department to move those living on the streets from places they might be seen by tourists. Many were told to go to 13th Street — Division Street — a place of perpetual half-darkness roofed by the Central Freeway. …
Criminal sentencing policies swing one way and then the other, but demand for entry into the Delancey Street residential training center for drug abusers, ex-convicts, and the unhoused remains the same, according to Dr. Mimi Silbert, the program’s president and chief executive office. Started in 1971 by Silbert and John Maher, the San Francisco center…
Shortly before the start of the pandemic, Smuin Contemporary Ballet and the Smuin Center for Dance relocated to 1830 17th Street, between Rhode Island and De Haro. The Ballet was founded in 1994 by Michael Smuin, former choreographer and co-artistic director of San Francisco Ballet; the Smuin Center for Dance was established two years ago…
Opened in October 2020, Crane Cove Park – located at 18th and Illinois streets – has quickly become a beloved neighborhood asset. But community members are concerned that the seven-acre regional park is being maltreated, with poor landscape maintenance and a lack of enforcement to keep dogs leashed. “The Port thinks this park is their…
Six new and two returning members were empaneled on the Dogpatch & NW Potrero Hill Green Benefit District’s board last month. The eight – representing more than half the 15 board seats – were chosen by property owners within the district, according to executive director Julie Christiansen. “Every year typically five seats are up for…
Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s undergrounding of two miles of new distribution lines in Potrero Hill has prompted concerns from residents about short-term parking shortages while the work is being done, a lack of construction competency, implications of the costly investment to future utility rates and a lack of transparency. Hill residents are also…
As the April 15 deadline for redistricting supervisorial districts approaches, many District 10 residents are adamant that Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, and Bayview should remain together. To separate them would be counter to historical ties between the communities, demographic patterns, and interests advocates insist. Yet, one proposed map, released last month, puts areas west of Kansas…
At the beginning of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital broke ground on a $290 million, 175,000-square foot research and office facility, funded by the University of California. Construction of the Research and Academic Building (RAB) is expected to be completed this year, with occupancy by early-2023. RAB will…
San Franciscans are accustomed to ever-higher real estate prices and scant amounts of housing offered for sale. Two years into the pandemic cum endemic, sellers’ motivations, buyers’ demands, and open house experiences continue to evolve. Between 2020 and 2021, the City’s population dropped by roughly 1.8 percent, 15,435 people, according to California Department of Finance…
According to Jim Cunha, who was born, raised, educated, and lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of his 72 years, he and his wife, Maureen, didn’t leave California; California left them. Despite the presence of multiple siblings, children, and grandchildren the Cunhas found it difficult to downsize from their home in Orinda…
Despite the pandemic, Potrero Kids, with campuses in Dogpatch and Potrero Hill, had mostly returned to a normal routine last fall. That changed in January with the Omicron coronavirus variant, which pushed half the staff of about 20 teachers into quarantine. “It’s really the first time that we saw a large number of cases,” said…
It’s no secret that the City has become prohibitively expensive for emerging artists, largely due to its proximity to Silicon Valley and the tech, now biotech, boom of the last twenty-some years. Previously bohemian neighborhoods, such as the Fillmore, North Beach, and Potrero Hill, are no longer affordable. In recent years even established galleries with…
In July 2020 Mayor London Breed announced a goal of getting 6,000 people off the streets within two years as part of her Homelessness Recovery Plan. With roughly six months left on the Mayor’s self-determined objective, just 2,662 housing placements, 44 percent, have been made, though the number may be higher because it doesn’t account…