High-rises on hold: What to do with empty lots? DEVELOPMENT

The vacant lot sits idle at 535 Mission St. on, Saturday June 27, 2009, in San Francisco, Calif. The vacant lot sits idle at 535 Mission St. on, Saturday June 27, 2009, in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close High-rises on hold: What to do with empty lots? 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

The high-rise boom has gone quiet, and a new challenge faces San Francisco: deciding what to do with land cleared for towers that may not rise for another decade - if at all.

At least a dozen large development sites in the city's South of Market district now sit empty or covered by asphalt because of the recession. If history is any guide, developers will either leave them fenced off or use them as parking lots.

But there's another alternative - one that, if successful, could influence cities across the nation.

With ingenuity and a modest investment, San Francisco could breathe life into these voids until the demand for development returns. Some could be landscaped with fast-growing trees and shrubs that offer environmental benefits. Others could display art or offer casual spots for social interaction.

There are no clear models to follow: Any initiative must be acceptable to landowners, with details worked out in advance regarding such issues as maintenance and security. Done well, though, the payoff could far exceed the cost - creating short-term showcases rather than blight that drags its neighbors down.

Big plans laid low

Parcels stranded by the boom-turned-bust can be seen across the city, but two especially vivid examples are on display at either end of San Francisco's zone of high-rise change, the terrain south of Market Street bounded by the bay, South Van Ness Avenue and Interstate 80.

One is the northeast corner of Harrison and Fremont streets on Rincon Hill, where cars spill from a Bay Bridge off-ramp. The other is the southwest corner of 10th and Market streets, a portal for drivers heading in from the city's western neighborhoods.

Each site was cleared of buildings last year, and the owners have permission to construct towers. Yet each sits in limbo, empty and grim.

At 10th and Market, where 35- and 19-story towers would contain 719 condominiums, bricks are stacked crudely along the edge of a craterlike concrete basement - all that remains of the bank operations center that occupied the corner for decades.

Even the foundations are gone at 399 Fremont St. And instead of 393 condominiums in a 41-story tower, there's a terraced excavation longer than a football field, covered by sand, rubble and straggly weeds.

These sites are conspicuous, but hardly unique: Open parcels throughout the neighborhood have building proposals in the works. Some were cleared recently, others predate the boom. None is likely to be filled anytime soon.

"We are seeing a lull" that in many cases could last several years, said John Rahaim, the city's planning director. "There's the credit crunch as well as the housing slump."

Experimentation elsewhere

The construction freeze isn't confined to San Francisco. And most cities respond the same way - giving developers extra time to break ground while, often, allowing interim use as parking lots.

On Rincon Hill, for instance, developers are required to start construction within 18 months of receiving their planning approvals. If there are delays, they can request a procession of 12-month extensions.

That's what happened last month for two Rincon sites, including 399 Fremont. The Planning Commission voted to extend the approvals, stipulating that the lots be kept free of trash and graffiti and asking owners to come back with ideas on how to make things a bit more scenic.

In other cities, you'll find more novel efforts to fill in the blanks.

-- In New York, sculpture exhibitions may adorn a large downtown site. The concept is the brainchild of owner Trinity Real Estate and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, though details are still being worked out.

-- In Miami, elected Commissioner Marc Sarnoff has offered developers a deal: The city will rent empty sites at $1 a year to create temporary parks. The developers would help fund the landscaping, but their entitlements would remain for the life of the lease.

-- After the recession stalled a hotel one block from Seattle's Pike Place Market, developer Urban Visions let food vendors use a portion of the parking lot to serve up barbecued pork in May.

"This is a horizontal canvas we're playing with," said Urban Visions' Greg Smith. "Someday the highest and best use of this corner is a more urban development. In the meantime, this is a way to bring energy and life without a 20-year investment."

The one initiative in San Francisco concerns Octavia Boulevard, the four-block roadway created after the Central Freeway was removed in 2003.

Six years later, the city's vision of midrise housing along the boulevard remains elusive - causing frustrated neighbors to suggest that for now, some of the lots could serve as dog parks or community gardens.

"Our starting point is, how do you make a problem into an opportunity?" said Jim Warshell of the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association. "What's there is ugly, as opposed to an asset."

Alternatives to asphalt

Octavia offers a promising start: The lots are city-owned and relatively small. But the stakes are higher south of Market Street.

As long as prominent sites sit neglected in emerging districts like Rincon Hill, they're dampers on change. Imagine if, instead, the city loosened its rules to allow development rights to be extended three or five years - but only if developers in return allow interim landscapes on their land.

This doesn't mean extravagant plantings. On a half-acre lot, for instance, it would cost less than $2,000 to install an irrigation system. Cover the site with fast-growing trees like Brisbane box, and within three years there'd be a leafy bosque taking carbon from the air and sending fresh oxygen toward passers-by.

A developer seeking favorable attention could instead offer a site on a rotating basis to local artists or landscape architects.

Doug Wildmon of Friends of the Urban Forest offers another concept: Join up with a youth job-training program and run a tree farm. Chilean soapbark - well suited to serve as a street tree - could be arrayed in 7-gallon boxes at a cost of $50 per tree. With the proper care, in three years they'd be 12 feet tall - and ready to be sold at a wholesale cost of $150 each.

"You either get fast-growing trees and pulp them, or container trees that increase in size and can be planted somewhere else," Wildmon concluded.

Planning Director Rahaim said the city is open to creative short-term uses.

"The challenge is to make these parcels visually attractive while still sending a message that they're temporary," Rahaim said. At the very least, "it's incumbent on us to work with developers to clean them up, make sure they're safe and not a haven for illegal acts."

Economic tumult aside, today's urban centers are being redefined in remarkable and lasting ways. Neighborhoods are no longer defined by only one or two activities. The blocks south of Market Street offer an increasingly fine-grain blend of culture, commerce and housing.

More and more, that's what people want.

The future of healthy urban centers is the attraction of the place itself. Large empty lots - whether filled with cars or covered with weeds - detract from what can be. Conversely, imaginative use of prominent spaces could signal that San Francisco is a city of innovation, where unpredictability is part of the allure.

It deserves a try.

When plans go awry, lots empty for years Developers talk of empty lots as short-term blanks, sure to be filled when the economy shifts. But "temporary" conditions have a way of becoming permanent, as these two parcels show. -- If someone had planted and tended a redwood tree at the northwest corner of Pine and Kearny streets when the site was cleared in the 1970s, by now it could be a statuesque counterpoint to the Bank of America tower across the street. Instead, the fenced-off lot sits mangy and unkempt. The site was owned for decades by powerhouse developer Walter Shorenstein, who filed a lawsuit in 1981 to block San Francisco's transit fee on new buildings. Not only did the city triumph, it then said that Shorenstein couldn't proceed with plans for a tower at this corner because it would cast a shadow on nearby St. Mary's Square. "Now, our inclination is to do nothing," he sniffed at the time. The lot recently changed hands, but it's still forlorn, and long overdue for spiffing up. -- Looking at the small parking lot at 524 Howard St., you wouldn't know this midblock site was approved for a 23-story tower - in 1989. That developer has come and gone since then, as have two others, with construction never quite getting started. The current owner made noise in 2007 about hiring New York architect Richard Meier to produce a sleek new design - but that was before the economic tide went out yet again. Is there still an entitled project? The city says no, the developer's attorney says yes. One thing is certain: The parking lot won't disappear anytime soon. - John King