Northeastern Waterfront, San Francisco, CA
ROMA prepared plans for 1-1/2 miles of urban waterfront extending from China Basin to Broadway. At the time the work was begun, the waterfront was characterized by major undeveloped and underutilized parcels of land mostly in surface parking and storage uses and separated from the city by wide vehicular oriented streets and freight rail tracks. Previous proposals for the waterfront in the 1960s and 70s had focused on filling the bay for large scale redevelopment and the waterfront became the subject of intense public debate and controversy. After many years of proposals that ignited community protest and activism , the City assigned three departments (Planning, Redevelopment and the Port) with the responsibility to work together for the first time with ROMA, BCDC and a 30-member Citizen’s Advisory Committee to set a new direction for the waterfront and adjacent lands. The plans that were ultimately adopted called for the creation of a new waterfront residential district (South Beach); the intensification of commercial uses adjacent to downtown, and a the creation of a connected necklace of shoreline parks, promenades and piers linking to and along the waterfront. Further, the plans advanced the idea of removing the Embarcadero Freeway and transforming the Embarcadero roadway into a transit-oriented mixed mode boulevard oriented to recreation. The plans for this area have since resulted in several thousand new housing units, a major marina, acres of new waterfront parkland and new commercial development and sparked further renewal to the south, in Mission Bay, and ultimately Pier 70. Our work on the San Francisco waterfront was acclaimed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “the most striking success to date anywhere in this country and perhaps in the world of a citizen participation effort. The result is not a patched-up popular compromise, but a lordly urban vision”.