A battle is brewing in Potrero Hill. In one corner are Walden Development and the Prado Group; in the other is Save the Hill, a neighborhood preservation and advocacy group. At stake: A proposed mixed-use complex on Mississippi between 16th and 17th Streets. The six-story, 395-unit building is slated to go up in what’s now a desolate block of industrial factories and the old Corovan storage facility.
Developers’ renderings show two sleek — if generic — buildings hemmed by a leafy promenade at ground level. The complex would include parking for 388 cars and 455 bikes, as well as retail space. Save the Hill opposes the project on the grounds that it would mean more traffic, loss of historic buildings, excessive density, and the exposure of contaminated soil. The group’s website calls the structure “unnecessarily tall, wide, and contextually inappropriate,” and further compares it to “an ocean liner parked in a marina full of sail boats.”
The historic buildings Save the Hill is referring to is the complex of factories once anchored by the Pacific Rolling Mill Company, built in 1905. Eight years ago, developers bought the lot with plans to demolish the buildings and construct a 700,000-square-foot Kaiser medical center. That plan fell through thanks to pushback from the community, but Save the Hill argues this new proposal is just the old Kaiser plan “repackaged.”
As an alternative, Save the Hill has submitted its own blueprint that calls for a “comprehensive adaptive reuse project…[that] remodels the existing buildings in a visionary plan that honors both our neighborhood’s character and history while delivering an authentic mixed-use project for the community.” The plan would allow for between 131 and 206 units of housing, while nixing the potential 20,000-square-foot “formula retail” space.
Save the Hill says it’s not anti-development, but that “neighborhoods are like ecosystems,” and massive new buildings are akin to “invasive species” that permanently — often detrimentally — impact the community. To underscore that point, Save the Hill offers this before and after picture:
The group will present its objections at a special environmental hearing tomorrow night.
[via SF Curbed; photo courtesy of Save the Hill]
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