With the impending demoltion of the Transbay Terminal making the news recently, I thought it would be good time to look at the vision of the new Transbay Transit Center.
The scale of the new vision is undeniably massive. It starts with the Transit Center itself, but also includes a redevelopment plan that envelopes much of the Rincon Hill/SOMA neighborhood.
That plan includes other additional commercial and residential towers, and a re-imagined Folsom Street, to emerge as the new retail main street of the neighborhood, with wider sidewalks, shade-trees, and even a view of the bay.
The new Transit Center itself is a modern vision of urban renewal, with infrastructure, open space, social and economic components considered and addressed in the new development. The visual and economic centerpiece of the development is a new, massive tower – to be the tallest in San Francisco, rising above a grand central station of sorts – a hub for bus, rail, and subway lines, including connections to CalTrain (currently accessible further south at King Street), and new subway lines extending north into Chinatown.
Beyond its core purpose as the throbbing heart of area transportion, the Transit Center includes a novel elevated park, rising above the ramps, buses, rail lines, and coffee shops. The park will be connected to the street by tram, elevator, and escalator, with forrest-like glass and steel canopies fashioned in organic architectural shapes that draw your eyes up to the urban forest. At the street, commercial space with a marketplace feel, softens the distinction between exterior and interior of the Center.
The ingenious park adds not only to the tower, but to the neighborhood – creating a lush, green, social gathering space where today there is only a vast swath of pavement and vehicle traffic. Nearby towers will gain a beautiful new landscape, impacting not just their views but the feeling of this part of downtown.
The tower itself is massive, of proper scale and specter to establish itself as the new focal point of the San Francisco skyline. With its gleaming white steel and glass exterior, sinuous profile, and glowing and gleaming upper crown, it will certainly dominate SOMA.
This is a immensely ambitious vision, but one that appears to have a significant and inherent human element – from the new open spaces, to the dramatic but gentle inter-connection of street and social spaces at street level. If the execution stays true to the vision, this endeavor will have a huge impact on the character of San Francisco, at once enhancing the City’s connection to the Bay Area and emphasizing its singular identity, as the creation of a new, iconic structure and space will touch generations of people from around the globe.