Van Ness Avenue: Two-mile long disaster
In Tuesday's SF Chronicle on the Van Ness Avenue fiasco:
...The hospital — California Pacific Medical Center — is open now, but with the exception of a medical office building, none of the other developments has been built. Instead, Van Ness seems to be going in the opposite direction, with blocks of empty retail spaces and buildings with plans in limbo.The AMC 14 movie theater at 1000 Van Ness closed last month; the Circuit City, which until recently served as the hospital’s construction office, is uninhabited, as is the former Concordia-Argonaut Club, which the Academy of Art University owns, across from the hospital. The CVS pharmacy at Sutter and Van Ness is slated to close at the end of March.The only new development is the 250,000-square foot Pacific Medical Building across the street from the hospital at 1100 Van Ness. Sutter Health is the main tenant, leasing 78 percent of the space in the building, which was developed in conjunction with the hospital.Neighbors attribute the lack of progress to several factors: planning delays, the tightening of capital markets, soaring construction costs, and the hassles and traffic gridlock stemming from the $316 million bus rapid transit line under construction along Van Ness, which is running 18 months late...
Rob's comment:
The notion that the new hospital on Van Ness Avenue was going to lead to a development boom may turn out to be true---years from now, that is. Why would a retailer open a business on what's turned out to be a chronic, two-mile long disaster area?
The MTA of course calls the ongoing degradation of the city's main North-South street an "improvement project," like the recent projects on Masonic Avenue and Polk Street are "streetscape" projects, not just bike projects tarted up with some landscaping.
See also The Van Ness BRT Costs Way, Way Too Much, Two-mile-long Van Ness bus lane project faces two-year delay, and Streets of San Francisco are always being dug up.
Labels: Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), City Government, Language, Masonic Avenue, Muni, Polk Street, SF Chronicle, Van Ness BRT
posted by Rob Anderson @ 3:41 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Over half of van ness is slated for more high rise empty mixed use development. They could careless if anybody leaves or shit down.
I live just south of Mission near Van Ness. The whole corridor is in disarray, right now the start the project was an utter disaster. From the very first day they seemingly shut down all left turns from Van Ness, removed a lane of traffic and it sat that way for many may months (year+???) with NOTHING happening. Yeah I get it ...make driving horrible so people get out of their cars, that is the MTA planning model. The only thing is they have made no provisions for improving public transit...riding MUNI in my location is ...is the fuck!!
Over a two month time on MUNI I have been witness to crazy people and thugs have there way on buses...drug use, booze drinking and dope smoking, bothering other passengers or doing outright crime of robbery or intimidation. It should not be this way!!!
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