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the view from the 3rd St. bridge over Islais Creek
A Bridge Too Near
(if not too far)
Can the City's art warehouses be saved?
By D.S. Black
The engine of change does not sleep. Although the DotCom Bomb is behind us, shit still happens as surely as time marches on. Robert Heinlein once noted, "the roads must roll" - meanwhile the Muni light rail is being extended down 3rd St. The wheels of progress churn churn churn, with unexpected gyrations.
The 1800 block of Illinois Street is an unlikely new front in San Francisco's redevelopment battle. It is an industrial area roughly midway between Bayview and Potrero Hill. A conflict is brewing here between an eclectic and entrenched colony of artists, craftspeople, and renegade technologists on one side, and on the other, its neighbor, the Port of San Francisco, which wants to build a new "intermodal" bridge for rail and truck traffic across Islais Creek on Illinois Street.
Although there is already a bridge only one block away on Third Street, port representatives say a new bridge could provide a direct rail link between the recently upgraded Pier 80 and Piers 92 and 94/96. Trucks have only a few blocks to drive; for trains there is now a circuitous trek up to 16th St. and then down Illinois, an almost 3.5 mile journey which could be reduced to .66 mile over the creek.
Below: the view from Bernal Hill looking over the creek and port facilities
At Right: fence across from warehouse separating street from port jurisdiction.
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Which is a problem for many of the tenants who have settled into a rambling, industrial space on Illinois Street described by one as "a tin can on a slab of cement." Built in the 1950s, the old Reynolds Aluminum building is known to Bay Area scenesters for events like Kill Your TV and performances at venues like Cyclone and the Cat Haus.
Besides being a center for alternative expression, this warehouse is headquarters to an Internet company (Monkeybrains.net) and a at the computational device firm (OQO), as well as home to machinists, gardeners, noise musicians (7hz), an interactive robot performance troupe (SEEMEN), and other arts, crafts, and light-industry groups that collectively involve around 200 persons. Their continued existence in this drafty warehouse is threatened by the bridge project, which will come before the port commissioners for a vote early in 2002.
When details about the bridge were announced to the public last summer, the project was already on a planning fast-track. The port assembled both a design and funding package feasibly budgeted at $11 million - provided construction could begin by 2003. The tenants on Illinois Street suddenly found themselves uncomfortably close to a new city-planning battleground.
Below: where Illinois St. ends on Islais Creek, site of proposed new bridge
At right: Illinois St. community's reaction to proposed bridge
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"The moment the ground starts to be broke, our lives and our business are gonna change dramatically," said SEEMEN ringleader Kal Spelletich, who has been operating out of the Marin Street side of the building for seven years. "I have to do precision welding and machining. I can't do it with pile driving happening outside. Do I move? Do I need to pull up shop and change my life and get the hell out of here now? Is this the time to pull out of San Francisco, because [the port is] essentially potentially ruining my business?"
Others chimed in at a meeting with port officials in November, saying if the bridge is built, they will have no choice but to "get the hell out."
For David Erickson, "The big picture is it's not about getting port rail cargo from this side to that side [of Islais Creek], it's about creating a major new traffic corridor on Illinois St. It's about gentrification."
If construction goes as planned, the new traffic corridor will result in 1,850 truck trips a day redirected from Third Street down Illinois. When the new Muni light rail line swallows two traffic lanes down the center of an increasingly developed and sylvan Third Street, this diversion one block east is supposed to mitigate congestion.
To Nick Merz, head of industrial design at OQO, the influx of trucks would be intolerable. During recent digging to install Muni duct banks under port property, a single diesel engine drill was operating 100 feet from his office, requiring him to shut down the business at times when noxious fumes sickened the people inside. A new bridge would result in an exponentially greater amount of truck emissions for anybody still in the building after construction.
Recently, the drilling resulted in collateral damage to the Muwekma Ohlone Sanctuary, a pocket park between the port and the creek, when a sewer carrying 80 million gallons a day of secondary effluent was ruptured, causing sewage to bubble up through the ground (see "Up Shit's Creek," 12/5/01). The park is still very much a mess and raises concern about future projects.
Below: collapsed and denuded Muwekma Ohlone Sanctuary following duct bank drilling disaster
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"The statement this sewer collapse makes," sanctuary gardener and Illinois Street artist David Erickson said, "is, if just a little tube under the creek caused this thing to break ... what do you think would happen if you tried to put a bridge in here with pile driving and heavy equipment?"
Jory Bell, a colleague of Merz, first saw a notice back in June concerning the duct bank project. He called the number listed and spoke with Peter Young, a port engineer whom he asked to keep him informed about any other planned developments in the area. He was assured he would be and was upset when that did not happen.
Representatives from the port eventually did meet with the tenants of Illinois Street and respond to suggestions such as moving the bridge one block East, to Michigan Street. From the port's standpoint, Illinois Street remains the preferred route.
Port commissioner Bruce McWilliams, former president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, put it starkly: "If we don't have rail access [at Pier 80], we're making a conscious decision not to bring jobs here. If we don't have rail access, the work that's going to be available to us is going to go to Stockton, Sacramento, Houston ... even Mexico and Canada. Our opportunity to attract the work that is rail dependent is dependent on our having dockside rail. Not rail down the middle of the terminal, but rail right up against the ship on the water. That's an important equation for marketing the port, which is a very important part of the economic engine of the Bay Area."
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Even without the Illinois Street bridge, the port would retain what it calls the "16th Street Option." In this scenario, Catellus, developer of Mission Bay, would accommodate the port by rerouting instead of removing tracks within Mission Bay. This would be a modified version of the existing route, in which trains access Pier 80 by first going north to 16th Street and then south again. Although not the most direct or economical course for freight traffic to take, it would enable the Illinois Street community to survive.
At right and below: artwork on Illinois St., February 2001
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For the bridge project to go forward it first must be approved by the port commissioners, and then a host of regulatory agencies - including the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers, the California Department of Fish and Game, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the Planning Department, and others - must weigh in. If it receives a green light, construction could begin as early as next summer.
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At a public meeting held at port offices Dec. 18 representatives from Illinois Street, the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, and Bayview-Hunter's Point asked that there be a follow-up early in the New Year with port commissioners present, since thus far only McWilliams - one of five commissioners - has bothered to meet with the community.
Two organizations are being created to make the case for the Illinois Streets tenants: the Illinois St. Business Group and the Islais Creek Arts Organization. David Erickson's web site chronicles the tenants' efforts and recently added an online petition to stop the bridge and other documents describing issues concerning the Illinois Street community.
Summing up his frustration, Jory Bell said, "It is pretty shocking to realize the degree to which it was considered normal to have a closed, nonresponsive development process in this area. We've been trying to make people aware in planning and local government that it's important to have a partnership with the community. One of the better outcomes, regardless of what happens with this bridge, is if the assumptions on the part of local government officials is that the mechanisms they make available have to offer that kind of opportunity."
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©2001 D.S. Black
D.S. Black is the grandchild of a civil engineer and friend of the arts.
This article was published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian December 26, 2001, page 22. During this week the newspaper was closed to move its offices. "Due to construction activities we will be unable to update the SFBG.COM website for this issue." Also, it should be noted that this article was originally twice the length published in the print edition. Some of the text which was removed owing to space constraints has been restored in this on-line version. Any inaccuracies or infelicities are the fault of the author and not the editors.
hypernotes
gyrations
In the age just past (pre-911), a bridge represented a crossing of promise and hope. More than just a structure spanning a gap and providing passage, bridges were glamorized yellowbrick roads of progress, imbued with the visionary splendor of a Golden Gate, or the populist promise of Bill Clinton's "Bridge to the 21st Century."
new bridge
The Port Authority of San Francisco is confident that a proposed bridge - accommodating both rail and truck traffic - over Islais Creek using the Illinois St. right of way is a solution to longstanding problems confronting its maritime freight business.
Despite losing much of the Bay Area shipping business to the Port of Oakland in recent decades, San Francisco still hopes to revive its fortunes. Unlike Oakland, which is approaching 100% containerization of its cargo, the recently upgraded facilities at its North cargo terminal (on the North side of Islais Creek, a few blocks southeast of Cesar Chavez) at Pier 80, and Piers 92-96 (on the South side) are able to handle cargo in containers as well as bulk and breakbulk cargo. As noted below, the building boom at Mission Bay, the 3rd St. Muni Light Rail extension and other projects have fuelled this vision of intermodally moving cargo and particularly building materials through port facilities on the southern waterfront of San Francisco.
Cyclone and other spaces
When a building that houses Cyclone and collocated arts and technology groups is threatened by development, it recalls the blow to alternative arts in the 1980s when the Farm, a punk and performance mecca just off Potrero St. was shut down thanks to landlord greed. "It would suck to survive the dotcom thing, only to be evicted by this bridge," said one of the robot artists a few doors up from Cyclone.
threatened...by a spectral bridge
The specter of a new bridge has loomed so long over this community that the Illinois St. tenants perhaps never expected it to materialize.
Last summer the port began a process of consultation that involved meetings with SWAC (the Southern Waterfront Advisory Committee, a group of mostly business representatives which is supposed to serve as community liaison for the port), MCAC (Maritime Commerce Advisory Committee), and the Bayview Hunter's Point PAC (Project Area Committee).
It wasn't till late summer that the occupants of the building nearest where the proposed bridge would be built on Illinois learned that this heretofore apocryphal bridge idea had been fast-tracked. At their request, the port had the first meeting with the Illinois St. community in August, with follow-ups in October and November.
Catellus - the land holdings development company which is the offspring of Southern Pacific Railroad - one of the biggest land owners in the West. Ironically, part of Catellus's plans for its 303-acre development of Mission Bay calls for the removal rail tracks at the bottom of 16th St. Catellus is prepared to pony up $4.5 million towards the total estimated $11 million cost if the bridge is approved and proceeds in a timely manner, obviating the need for those tracks.
pocket park
For the last 8 years David Erickson has facilitated community work tending a 2.5 acre strip of land and wetlands along Islais Creek on property which is under port jurisdiction. Initially he was doing so as a guerrilla gardener; his restoration work has received cooperation from the port and $30,000 in funding from the Urban Resources Partnership. Since July 2000 his pocket park has been called the Muwekma Ohlone Sanctuary.
survival amidst building materials
This bridge may not be the only future intrusion on Illinois St. Two cement products companies - Bode Gravel Co. and RMC Pacific Materials (formerly RMC Lonestar) - have recently lost their leases in the Mission Bay area. Bode is relocating to a lot near Pier 92, south of Islais Creek, while RMC is negotiating with the port to move onto land by Pier 80, between Michigan and Illinois Streets.
These movements are further signs of a growing concentration of heavy industries clustered around port facilities intended to take advantage of "large construction projects such as Mission Bay, UCSF Campus, Downtown Ferry Terminal, Third Street Light Rail Extension, Moscone Expansion, Caltrans Bay Bridge retrofits and construction" according to Port Commission meeting minutes from June 26.
The owner of the Illinois St. warehouse, William Spencer, said "If they [RMC] do build there, then we're going to file a lawsuit once a month if in fact there is any dust that comes in" to his building.
