2014
"Vexed in the city: If you’re moving to San Francisco, bring cash. Lots of cash"
Most cities would die for the problems San Francisco is having. But with so many techies flooding the city, the cost of renting or buying a place to live is soaring.
SAN FRANCISCO — Two years and 18 bids after they first tried to find a place to live in San Francisco, Julia Knittel and her fiance Rasheq Zarif finally nabbed an apartment.
...More"Good Housing Comes in Small Packages"
Real estate developer Patrick Kennedy prefers minimalism and efficiency. When he ends a phone conversation, he says, “Thanks, goodbye,” then hangs up. HIs email subject lines contain actual message-no need to waste time opening the email. And his hobby? Ultra-lightweight backpacking, where you strip down to the absolute minimum of what you carry.
As a developer and proponent of urban microapartments with his Berkeley-based company, Panoramic Interests, Kennedy is well aware that his hobby is a bit of a busman’s holiday version of his job.
...More"One9: Nine-Story Prefab Apartment Tower was Installed in Just Five Days"
Prefab technology is revolutionizing the way we build our homes, one stackable Lego-like module at a time. Australian construction company Hickory Group recently completed one such example with the One9, a nine-story apartment tower that was installed in just five days. Built from 36 prefab modules, the One9 project also includes numerous environmentally sustainable features such as a gray water recycling system and solar hot water panels.
...More"How S.F.’s Mid-Mission district is tranSForming"
Over the past five years, 1,400 new housing units have opened on Mission Street between Fifth Street and South Van Ness Avenue, including 800 studio apartments that landlord Angelo Sangiacomo built between Seventh and Eighth streets.
And there are a lot more coming.
On Mission between Eighth Street and around 10th Street, contractors are pouring floors on three mid-rise residential towers, construction that will bring an additional 500 units to the corridor by the end of 2015.
At 1400 Mission St., Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp. is building 190 affordable family units. Across the street, at 1415 Mission St., Martin Building Co. is working on 126 apartments, while a block to the east at 1321 Mission St., Berkeley developer Patrick Kennedy is well under way on 160 micro-studios and “micro-suites,” half of which will provide housing for students from the California College of the Arts.
...More"The Second Smartest Space in San Francisco"
A while ago we checked out San Francisco’s SMARTSPACE Harriet (i.e. the first smartest space in San Francisco), a four story, 23-unit building made up of prefab micro-apartments. SMARTSPACE Harriet was and is significant as it, along with Vancouver’s Micro Lofts, was one of the first true micro-apartment buildings in the modern sense of the term. The vigorously designed 295 sq ft apartments employed numerous tranSForming elements that made them perform like much larger spaces. The inclusion of things like a building car-share, communal spaces and solar hot water made them all the sweeter. Now (well, for a while actually) SMARTSPACE developer Panoramic Interests is building on its initial project. “The Panoramic” is a 160 unit, 11-story building going up in San Francisco’s SoMa District and it represents a lot of big ideas in small building and living.
...More"MICROUNIT REVOLUTION!"
Micro housing developer Patrick Kennedy is on a roll (and not just because of his treadmill desk, below). His latest project in Berkeley, Calif. proves thetiny living arrangement is here to stay in the US.
San Francisco is the trendsetter, with Patrick’s firm (Berkeley-based Panoramic Interests) delivering the country’s first prefab micro housing project in SoMa last year: 23 units less than 300 SF each, gobbled up in a flash.
...More"Millennials Prefer Cities to Suburbs, Subways to Driveways"
Millennials are the social generation, both online and in-person. As the founders of the social media movement, they’re never more than a few clicks away from friends and family. And offline, they prefer to live in dense, diverse urban villages where social interaction is just outside their front doors.
Breaking from previous generations’ ideals, this group’s “American Dream” is transitioning from the white picket fence in the suburbs to the historic brownstone stoop in the heart of the city. And their dreams have the power to affect cities and towns across the U.S. According to Nielsen’s recent Millennials – Breaking the Myths report, those aged 18-36 are 77 million strong, or 24 percent of the population—the same as Baby Boomers (between 49-67 years old). As Millennials continue to come of age and control an increasing share of the economy, understanding how their diversity and values play into their lifestyle and purchasing preferences will be essential to appeal to this generation of consumers.
...More"Prefabricated Micro Apartments–Pretty Fabulous"
In a previous blog, we introduced the micro-apartment trend and discussed whether it was the “real thing” or the latest fad in city living. The micro-apartments, or micro-units, as they’re sometimes called, average around 500 square feet or less and are geared toward young, single folks in urban locales.
...More"How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists (Or SF’s Housing Crisis Explained)"
The Santa Clara Valley was some of the most valuable agricultural land in the entire world, but it was paved over to create today’s Silicon Valley. This was simply the result of bad planning and layers of leadership failure — nobody thinks farms literally needed to be destroyed to create the technology industry’s success.
Today, the tech industry is apparently on track to destroy one of the world’s most valuable cultural treasures, San Francisco, by pushing out the diverse people who have helped create it. At least that’s the story you’ve read in hundreds of articles lately.
It doesn’t have to be this way. But everyone who lives in the Bay Area today needs to accept responsibility for making changes where they live so that everyone who wants to be here, can.
The alternative — inaction and self-absorption — very well could create the cynical elite paradise and middle-class dystopia that many fear. I’ve spent time looking into the city’s historical housing and development policies. With the protests escalating again, I am pretty tired of seeing the city’s young and disenfranchised fight each other amid an extreme housing shortage created by 30 to 40 years of NIMBYism (or “Not-In-My-Backyard-ism”) from the old wealth of the city and down from the peninsula suburbs.
...More"The 40 Most Notable New Developments Under Construction"
It’s boom time in San Francisco, and it seems as though there’s more construction happening now than ever before. All over town, construction crews are busy building homes, hospitals and office towers to accommodate an impressive influx of new residents and businesses. Last Summer, Curbed mapped forty of San Francisco’s most prominent development projects. Since then, ground has been broken on a slew of hotly-anticipated towers, while construction has wrapped up on some staples from the old list. As such, it’s high time for a map update. See a project that deserves to be on the list, but hasn’t been featured? Drop us a line, or let us know in the comments. Here now, without further ado, an updated map of SF’s forty most notable active development sites.
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