© McCormack's Guides
Zip Codes: 94103, 94107
A hot spot
for housing and office and high-tech and bio-tech jobs. Many new apartments and
condos. A little orientation. www.mccormacks.com
SOMA.
South of Market Street, the main boulevard in downtown San Francisco. SOMA is
sometimes used to describe the entire area we are talking about but often it is
broken down into small neighborhoods. These include:
China
Basin. On the Bay, south of Giants Stadium. Rail yards and industrial buildings have been bulldozed to make way for housing and bio-tech.
Rincon
Hill, about Second and Brannan streets, just south and north of the Bay Bridge. (See also Embarcadero).
South
Beach, on the Embarcadero, south of Rincon Hill, and just north of Giants
Stadium.
Mission
Bay. Just east of China Basin, between Interstate 280 and approximately Third
Street and Channel Street. South of Giants Stadium. www.mccormacks.com
Built out
decades ago, San Francisco about 30 years ago started to tear down the old and
dilapidated to make way for the new. Much of the decrepit, along with thriving
businesses, was located South of Market and for decades the neighborhood, with
its many saloons and flophouses, was considered the town's skid row. It was
also and to a diminishing extent still is a place where people
with little money could survive.
Click for regional or detailed map
The
Moscone Convention Center gave the neighborhood its first shove up the scale
and by and by artists and young professionals came to appreciate the
neighborhood's proximity to the downtown.
Some
buildings were converted to apartments or work-lofts. Dance clubs blossomed.
The Museum of Modern Art was later opened across from the Moscone. SOMA took on
some sizzle and began building new housing.
Mission
Bay, located about two miles south of the Moscone Center, was an industrial
zone with rail yards. About 1980, developers and others pushed for a plan to level just about the entire sector and convert it into a bio-tech-
residential neighborhood.
The plan
was thrown into the grinder of public opinion and hearings. Market conditions
blew cold and nothing seemed to be moving but in the 1990s, as if popping out
of a cake, Mission Bay showed up. The key move: Mayor Willie Brown gave the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) 43 acres, no charge. www.mccormacks.com
With this, UCSF, cramped in its campus on the west side, committed itself to building new facilities in Mission Bay, and
this gave the project credibility. UCSF, one of world's leaders in medical research, has about 21,000 employees and is a
major force in San Francisco.
In 2003,
Genentech Hall, the first building of the UC complex, opened, followed shortly two other buildings, a community center and student apartments.
At least 1,600 more apartments and condos have been built in the neighborhood. Plans call
for total 6,000 housing units and office towers.
Public art
in the plaza, Richard Serra's "Ballast." Weathered steel, two plates
about 50 feet high, five inches thick, 160 tons total. Like blades stuck in
the ground, says architect.
Several
years ago Californians voted to fund their own stem cell research and passed a
tax that will raise billions. Up and down the state, cities competed to win the
headquarters for this research, the grandly named, California Institute for
Regenerative Medicine. In 2005, the winner was announced: Mission Bay.
In 1989,
an earthquake damaged the Embarcadero Freeway, a short stub of highway that ran
north of the Bay Bridge. At one time, state engineers and the cement-freeway
crowd wanted to run this highway all the way around to the Golden Gate Bridge.
The job had enough political muscle to get started but then City residents
revolted and stopped it in its tracks. www.mccormacks.com
When the
1989 earthquake did its work, the City had the choice of rebuilding the freeway
or tearing it down. No brainer. Down it came, and to the surprise of many this
revived the Embarcadero, the shore road that runs from Fisherman's Wharf down
to Giants Stadium.
Within a
few years, with the help of some improvements foremost the rebuilding
of the Ferry Building into a shopping-culinary pavilion the Embarcadero
turned itself into a pretty and popular promenade.
In the
1990s, the Giants opened their stadium just south of the bridge, further
elevating the neighborhood and bringing in more housing. The stadium is located
at the end of the Caltrain line that brings in riders from the Peninsula.
The city
ran a light-rail line down to the stadium. This rail line in 2007 was extended
down to Mission Bay and beyond, all the way to Hunters Point-Bayview, one of
the poorest neighborhoods of the City, and near Candlestick Park, where the
Forty Niners play.
In 2005,
the politicians and developers worked out a deal to build on or near Rincon
Hill 2,200 condos in five towers, at least one going up 55 stories. In
exchange, the developers agreed to put up money to subsidize rents and housing
around SOMA and in other parts of the City. www.mccormacks.com
OK ... one
job here, one there, the unexpected (the earthquake damage) ... in the end,
everything came together in the revival of a big section of San Francisco, and
the work continues. Recently opened near the stadium: two supermarkets and a
private gym-exercise place.
From
Mission Bay, it's a long walk to downtown San Francisco but people do it. Or
they bike or take the light rail.
If you
work in Silicon Valley or at San Francisco Airport, Caltrain runs express
trains to these locations.
SOMA is
sheltered by the hills from the worst of the ocean fogs, a big plus. Many young
professionals, college grads, business people, researchers, doctors. If you are
searching for the right mate, of whatever persuasion, but monied and promising,
a good place to connect.
Lots to
do. Short cab or bus ride to opera house, symphony hall, main library, Asian
Museum, MOMA, etc. Plays, movies, bookstores. Loads of restaurants. Not too
many parks but more are planned. www.mccormacks.com
Lovely
vistas, pleasant walks. Ride your bike, line skate or stroll the promenade.
Close to
the best of San Francisco shopping, including Bloomingdales, opened 2006.
Almost unheard of for San Francisco, which hates large discount stores, there's
a Costco on the east side of SOMA.
New
housing, which may not sound like a big deal. But most of San Fran housing is
old and employs designs popular decades ago. The new stuff comes with modern
wiring, double-paned windows, often larger closets, open kitchens, and so on.
Drawbacks:
At peak
hours, the traffic on some streets is not even Stop-and-Go. It's Stop-and-Stew.
But some of the access ramps to the Bay Bridge are being overhauled.
For most
people, no subsidies. Housing priced at market rates, which can be high. www.mccormacks.com
When the
Giants play, traffic increases. But according to news reports, residents seem
to take the games in stride.
The
future: you don't need a crystal ball to predict that SOMA and elements are
going to become more popular.
Opened
in 2005: Museum of African Diaspora.
On the way in 2008, the Contemporary
Jewish Museum.
Just
below Mission Bay along Third Street is a small neighborhood called Dogpatch.
Protected by a marsh, many of its buildings survived the earthquake of 1906 and
in recent years have been fixed up. www.mccormacks.com
By some
counts, San Francisco will build 15,000 condos between 2007 and 2012, many of
them SOMA. But this guess was made before housing market went south in 2007.
See also
North Beach and Hunters Point.
In the
late 1990s, the dot-coms arrived and gravitated toward SOMA. About 1998, the
neighborhood woke up to find itself the hottest address in town, full of young
people working in what was considered cutting-edge technology. SOMA picked up
another name, Multi-Media Gulch.
Business
flocked to the neighborhood. Jobs boomed. Simmering housing battles flared to a
boil. San Francisco is a renters' town and to protect themselves against sharp
increases, the renters had pushed through tough rent-control laws, which the
landlords despise. In the early 1990s, when housing was slumping, the two sides
backed off but when the market roared, the landlords looked for ways to raise
rents or put more properties on the market. Then fell the dot-coms and with
them went the high rents and the shortage of office space.
A few
years later housing revived and prices soared and commercial came back. www.mccormacks.com
