Mission Bay

Mission Bay is primed for improvement. Located in a small south eastern pocket of San Francisco, the neighborhood is full of open space and is yet to reach its full potential in business development. Currently, the neighborhood is overrun with industrial business, public parking lots and empty streets. In the small commercial district, the neighborhood boasts a university medical campus and a handful of bioengineering firms.

There’s a few residential buildings in this area, but the few that do are living moderately comfortable. Walking around Mission Bay, you’re sure to see some of the most beautiful and ritzy condominiums with breathtaking views of the neighborhood. For the few that live in the area, AT&T park is just a short walk to the north.

Although somewhat far from downtown, the Muni serves the communities medical students and industrial workers. Nightlife is very space, with a few dive bars sprinkled along Terry à François Boulevard. Mission Bay residents tend to spend their free time in more lively neighborhoods like the Mission or Soma. Criminal activity is somewhat frequent with car break-ins and theft becoming a big nuisance. But nonetheless, the neighborhood is mostly forgotten among the general public

The future is here, and (in San Francisco at least) it is called Mission Bay. As one of the largest tracts of remaining open land in the city, it has been designated a kind of modern city-within-a-city, a vast space to be occupied by a university medical campus, a hospital complex, bio- and genetic-research organizations and firms, plus commercial offices and housing for all the employees and students and researchers the various concerns will attract. Little except the land and the bay remain from the area’s human history, and in keeping with the notion of a blank slate, the place will ultimately have an ultra-modern look, with sleek architecture and avant-garde urban parks and public places. As much of San Francisco looks back, to preserve and restore its past, Mission Bay looks forward, to create a new world that embraces science and technology and possibilities unexplored.

But this vision of the future is yet unrealized, most of it still on paper or in the mind of architects and builders. (What has been built has that haunted, where-did-the-people-go feel of modern architecture, with rectilinear utilitarian buildings looming over promenades and “village greens,” the palms and evergreen bushes planted at all-too-predictable intervals.) And as with most utopian dreams, the one on which Mission Bay is based has yet to be tested by the living, breathing, chaotic crush of human beings who will come here and alter the place as they occupy it. Whether it matches in reality what it promises in planners’ presentations remains very much to be seen.

What is obvious at first glance is that Mission Bay is a work in progress. These 300 acres were at various points in the last 150 years a true bay, bordered by marsh and tideland, then divided into parcels by San Francisco’s land-hungry 19th-century entrepreneurs, who sold “waterlots” (later filled with sand, garbage, trash—whatever they could get their hands on) on which they built ironworks and steel mills. The area was then crisscrossed with railroad tracks, maintenance sheds, and warehouses, handling as many as 2,000 freight-train cars a day. After the interstate highway system surpassed railroads as the preferred mode of moving the nation’s goods, the area slid into a peaceful if unproductive somnolence.

Today, the tracks and most of the historic rail buildings are gone. There’s hardly an old shack or building to remind you of what was one of the largest railyards between Los Angeles and Seattle. (The newly completed “T” line does carry train-like streetcars on tracks up Third Street and has three platform stations here, though that’s it for rails today.) But there’s plenty to tell you that this is something else: under the 1998 Mission Bay Redevelopment Plans, agreed to by the City of San Francisco and the primary developer Catellus, one of the largest biotech/biomedical centers (6 million square feet) in the United States is taking shape, with hundreds of people working in sleek new buildings to find new solutions to human diseases. About 6,000 housing units (1,700 of them affordable to moderate, low- and very low-income households) are slated, along with 800,000 square feet of retail space and a 500-room hotel. Forty-nine acres have been committed to public open space, including parks along Mission Creek and along the bay. A new public school, as well as a police station and firehouse, are also on the drawing board.

Between the vacant lots and empty streets, the pieces of the grand plan are starting to fit together. The University of California at San Francisco has established a second campus here (its original home still dominates the Inner Sunset); ultimately this biomedical research center will occupy 43 acres (most of it on land donated by the city and the primary developer, Catellus), including housing for students. Adjacent to the campus on 14 acres will be a new medical center, with a focus on children, family, and women’s health. A state-of-the-art research facility, the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, is up and running, to be joined by the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, scheduled to open in 2014 at Mariposa and Fourth.

The Gladstone Institutes, a nonprofit research facility for the life sciences associated with UCSF, comprising almost 200,000 square feet, opened in 2005, and QB3, a consortium of scientists and researchers from three UC campuses (Berkeley, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz), has moved into its new building here. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a pro-stem-cell research advocacy organization that was in many ways responsible for San Francisco’s early lead in biotech research, sits on the edge of Mission Bay, at King and Third streets. Old Navy, (a spinoff of The Gap clothing brand), moved its headquarters into a curved, steel-and-glass edifice it is leasing along Terry à François Boulevard. And in 2004, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a nationally known developer of private biotechnology research buildings, bought up much of the property in Mission Bay South set aside for commercial development and finished its first lab building on Owens Street.

So far, only about 2,000 people actually live in Mission Bay, according to U.S. Census Bureau data; 60 percent are white, 25 percent are Asian, with the rest a mix of African Americans and people of two or more races. They are young (median age is 35) and economically comfortable: median annual income is in the $80,000 range. Overwhelmingly (80 percent), they rent their homes. Interestingly, men (60 percent) outnumber women (40 percent) as a portion of the total population.

The waterfront here was long a home to dive bars and restaurants, the survivors of which along Terry à François Boulevard have gussied up a bit in anticipation of a new clientele: the Ramp with its funky patio; Mission Rock, a live-music club by night and restaurant by day serving lunch on weekdays and weekend brunch; and Jelly’s, a popular dance club (whose fate hangs in the balance after a recent fatal shooting in the parking lot). Otherwise, there’s little in the neighborhood besides chains (Subway on the UCSF campus) and franchise operations (Panera, on Fourth and King; Tsunami Mission Bay, on Fourth and Berry), though Peasant Pies on UCSF’s Campus Way gets high marks for its portable savory pies and reasonable prices and Philz Coffee on Berry Street draws crowds for its one-cup-at-a-time brew philosophy. It will take a while for the neighborhood to settle in with only-in-Mission-Bay spots. Meanwhile, residents venture west, to Potrero Hill (where there’s a Safeway and Office Depot in the Potrero Center, as well as a new Whole Foods on Rhode Island near 17th Street), or to the shops and stores of the Mission, or south, to the funky area known as Dogpatch (also commonly called the Central Waterfront).

For an interesting look at the area’s recent history, the curious can walk along Channel Street to check out the 20 houseboats moored in Mission Creek. These colorfully painted and outfitted floating homes were once considered an eyesore by the city’s port administration, but the 50 or so residents banded together and finally won a lease extension that permits them to live here until 2055. Nearby, just across the Fourth Street Bridge, sits the Mission Bay branch of the San Francisco Public Library. Opened in 2006, its collection highlights local interests like baseball and the city’s maritime history.

Because the area is so sparsely populated and children relatively few, there are no public schools in the Mission Bay neighborhood. But UCSF offers child care on its campus (just off Sixth and Owens streets) for kids ages 3 months to 5 years. The city’s redevelopment plan calls for an elementary school at some point in the future; meanwhile, Bessie Carmichael Elementary in South of Market is the closest public option.

Public transportation here is confined to the “T” streetcar that travels along Third Street headed for South of Market and the Financial District on its northerly trek and Bayview and other points as it heads south; three platform stops serve passengers as the streetcar line traverses Mission Bay. Students and faculty frequently use the shuttle buses provided by UCSF to get back and forth between the university’s main campus on Parnassus. For commuters, Caltrain offers daily service down the Peninsula from its terminal at Fourth and Townsend streets.

Crime is moderate, especially on the area’s peripheries, mostly because these are easy pickings for car break-ins and theft, which indicate the trend for property crime in San Francisco. Other quality-of-life violations, like disturbing the peace and vandalism, are also frequent. Assaults are not uncommon, especially around the ballpark and in the parking lots of bars and clubs. There have been four homicides in the last three years.

Real estate is not as inexpensive as might be expected, with many of the recently built condos here fetching up to $2.5 million (Berry and Fourth streets), and only a few in the $650,000 range (Radiance, on China Basin Street). Of course, with bay views and amenities like wide balconies, these homes could appreciate quickly. (The only development living up to the promise of “affordable housing” is Mission Walk on Berry Street, offering 131 condos—with some two-bedrooms starting as low as $200,000.) Rentals are likewise not cheap; a studio in one of the new buildings can fetch up to $1,900 (Avalon at Mission Bay North), with one-bedrooms on the neighborhood’s peripheries going for $2,300 a month, and two-bedroom condos fetching up to $3,200 and more.

Because this neighborhood promises to become desirable quickly (its proximity to the bay and downtown attractions like the ballpark and South of Market restaurants and clubs ensure a higher level of interest), it is hard to say how the expected influx of residents will alter what is essentially a planned community, not much different from similar developments (Park Merced in southwest San Francisco or The Gateway adjacent to the Financial District). That these places have become the latest to be frowned on, rife with the mistakes of their eras (1970s and ’80s uniformity and utilitarianism), should be lesson enough for this brave new world that calls itself Mission Bay.

Mission Bay: that crescent-shaped slice of land that has, up until the turn of the century, been largely ignored. Then, it seemed that when the economy was still booming, residential developers, businesses, and city planners woke up and noticed Mission Bay, this unpopulated, undeveloped swath of cheap land. This place put city planners to the test and so far, most new residents of the MB seem to be giving them high marks.
Mission Bay is green. There’s actually flat land on which to plant grass, and they have. But like most new trends, Mission Bay needed a trendsetter, a popular kid or a big fish to lead the way, to say that Mission Bay was okay. That big Fish was UCSF Medical Center. The medical monolith broke ground on a massive complex including three hospitals, a stem cell research center, and massive acres of green, community-themed centers for fitness, for kids, even a restaurant. With a few minor delays, everything is slated to be completed in 2014. But that’s not all.
The city set aside 30% of Mission Bay’s residential development for low income housing. This is the largest percentage anywhere in a city where people pay an extra 50-100k for a parking spot. Although lots of seniors and low income families have moved into brand-new apartment homes, and they have plenty of parks, green bike paths, there is a newness to the place that seems very unSan Francisco. Namely, the first floor commercial of some of the new residential buildings are filling up with chains like Starbucks, Panera Bread, and Subway.
At the south end of Mission Bay is a denser micro-neighborhood – Dogpatch – that counteracts this homogenization with a growing menagerie of shops and cafes. A couple months ago, Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, backed out of their 10 year lease for a major commercial building, Mission Bay and its supporters held their breath. But then an up and coming online gaming company, Zynga, stepped in. An up-and-comer to rescue this up and coming neighborhood. If you can, get in on this neighborhood before its parking places are in the tens of thousands.