Something Old, Something New on the San Francisco Waterfront

By Wes Starratt, P.E.

Move over Golden Gate Bridge, you’re not the only icon in town! The San Francisco waterfront will soon boast two world-class landmarks: one old, the restored landmark Ferry Building … and one new, the James R. Herman International Cruise Terminal, slated for groundbreaking before the end of 2003. Throughout the world, the Eiffel Tower says “Paris,” and soon the magnificently restored Ferry Building and the Cruise Ship Terminal, as well as the Golden Gate Bridge, will symbolize “San Francisco.”

Ferry Building Restoration

Completed in 1898 as a ferry terminal and a state office building, the Ferry Building remained San Francisco’s transportation hub for a half century. But it was much more than just a building, just a terminal; the Ferry Building was an eloquent symbol of the hope and aspirations of those who came West, with its mighty tower greeting those arriving from near and far. The Ferry Building was the gateway to the West and the hope and vision that the West symbolized. For decades, the Ferry Building provided access, not only to commuters from the East Bay, but also to transcontinental travelers, arriving by train at the Oakland Mole and transferring to waiting ferries for the trip across the Bay to the vibrant and exciting metropolis of the West, the City of San Francisco.

The Ferry Building was built on a grand scale, over 660 feet long with a Beaux Arts façade of Colusa Sandstone and topped by a 240-foot tower designed in the style of the Giralda of Sevilla. Its principal interior feature was the second-floor passenger concourse running the entire length of the building and known as the “nave.” Defined by its continuous ridge skylight, the nave is “one of the most memorable and elegant public spaces in San Francisco,” claims architect Cathy Simon of SMWM, the lead architectural firm for the Ferry Building restoration project.

The engineering aspects of the building are equally impressive, since it rests on concrete piers supported by 1,000 wooden piles, which are still intact and support the building to this very day. The building also features one of the first large-scale uses of reinforced concrete.

The structural integrity of the building was truly tested during the 1906 Earthquake, which left the Ferry Building shaken but scarcely damaged, although for an entire year the clock hands pointed ominously to 5:17 a.m. Fortunately, an order to demolish the building as unsafe was ignored, and ultimately a committee of engineers inspected the building and found it to be structurally sound, vindicating the building’s pioneering engineering and construction methods. For these reasons, the American Society of Civil Engineers dedicated the Ferry Building as an Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1977.

The completion of the Bay Bridge eventually doomed the ferries and the role of the Ferry Building as a transportation hub. More and more commuters took to the faster trains, buses, and cars that flowed across the bridge. The last boat left the Ferry Building in 1958 as San Francisco began looking for new uses for the building. With the addition of a third floor in the nave, the north wing was rebuilt as the World Trade Center, and the south wing became the offices of the Port of San Francisco. Thus, the building’s great nave was obliterated.

Outside the building, there was equally questionable progress. As the automobile became more and more dominate, the powers that be decided to build a big, ugly elevated freeway in front of the Ferry Building and along the Embarcadero to connect the Bay Bridge with the Golden Gate Bridge. The Embarcadero Freeway reached only as far as Broadway before the outcry of local citizens stopped it in its tracks. But it was the extensive damaged caused by the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake that proved to be the death knell for the elevated roadway.

San Franciscans now had their chance to reclaim their waterfront, and within two years the freeway was no more. The people of San Francisco could once again see their Ferry Building and began viewing it in a new light. They became aware that it really was a magnificent structure and deserved to be restored to its former glory.

At the same time, new high-speed ferries began to appear on the Bay. They soon proved that they could compete with buses and automobiles, and began bringing passengers first from Marin County and then Oakland, Alameda, and Vallejo. As traffic congestion grew on the bridges, more and more people began using the ferries. Soon, there was a vision of a regional high-speed ferry system with San Francisco once again as the hub, bringing a five-fold increase of passengers through the Ferry Building.

Last year, to facilitate that flow of passengers, a new San Francisco Ferry Terminal was completed and became operational, with docking facilities on the Bay side as well as the north and south sides of the Ferry Building. However, the Ferry Building itself was an obstacle to passengers who either had to walk around the enormous building or else find their way through a dimly-lit passageway through the building. The Ferry Building had become completely dysfunctional as a transportation hub, offering no amenities to passengers, and actually standing in the way of direct access to the new Ferry Terminal. With plans moving ahead for an enlarged regional ferry system, the Ferry Building would be an obstacle to the realization of that dream. Thus, the Ferry Building was having less and less reason for being, and there were even suggestions of removing it and erecting a high-rise office building in its place.

Meanwhile, right in front of the old Ferry Building, the Embarcadero was being transformed into a magnificent boulevard with palm trees and trolleys together with the spacious Embarcadero Plaza. So, while the old building was not only dysfunctional as a transportation hub, it was also an impediment to the broad vision of providing San Franciscans with access to their waterfront.
Several years ago, the Port tried to rebuild the Ferry Building, but had a poor experience with a developer. By 1998, however, it decided to try once more and issued a request for proposals to developers for the restoration of the Ferry Building to its former glory. The developer chosen would be granted a 66-year lease to the building, but would have to raise capital for the restoration and bring together a top-notch team of architects and structural engineers experienced in the restoration of historic buildings. The job would be challenging, blending historic materials and building methods with modern materials and construction requirements in a way that would provide structural integrity while respecting the historic nature of the building.

Selected Development Team

The team selected by the Port for the $75 million restoration of the Ferry Building includes a number of different firms. The controlling entity is Equity Office Properties, a real estate investment trust and the largest owner of office buildings in the country. In addition, there are three minority partners: Wilson Equity Office; Wilson Meany headed by Chris Meany, a developer of mixed use and retail properties as well as the restoration of historic properties such as the Flood Building on Market Street; and Primus Infrastructure, with experience in construction management.

Chris Meany, who serves as the on-site manager for the team, stressed to us that, “We have an extraordinary group of designers and contractors on the project … including three different architectural firms. It just happened that the best people we could find in the country were all based in San Francisco. The lead architectural firm is SMWM. Cathy Simon is the partner in charge and a very active hands-on leader of the design effort. Because the project has a big retail component on the ground floor, we brought in the firm of Baldauf Cotton Von Eckartsberg (BCV) … and because the building is on the National Register of Historic Buildings, we brought in an historic preservation architect, Jay Turnbull of Page and Turnbull.

“The project is complex in terms of its structural engineering, so the firm of Rutherford & Chekene was selected to lead a sizable group of engineers on the project including Structural Design Engineers (SDE) and Treadwell & Rollo for the geotechnical work. Plant is the general contractor, which we brought in at the beginning of the work so that they could participate in the design process.”

Meany’s concept has always been to restore the building in an architecturally appropriate way, to upgrade all of its systems to the highest standards, and then to use the upper floors of the building as premium-quality office space and the ground floor as a market place and a center point for the food industry. The ground floor will also provide commuters with direct access to ferries at the San Francisco Ferry Terminal on the Bay side of the building … perhaps bringing with them choice items for dinner.

Meany continued, “Our architectural concept can be stated simply: the restoration of the building’s lost nave, which was the center point and the most important element of the original building … 660 feet long, 45 feet wide, and sky lit … just one of the most beautiful interior spaces of any building in San Francisco which was lost in the remodeling that took place in the 1950s. It is a very powerful element that will be a magnet for the building for decades to come. So, we took out the entire third floor that had been inserted into the nave in the 1950s.

“From a structural standpoint, the building is built over the water. It’s on piles, but it’s actually built over the water. The city’s original seawall (from the 1890s) actually sits beneath the west wall of the building. Many of the buildings along the waterfront have had significant deterioration in their substructure … but … the Ferry Building is unique in having less substructure deterioration … and essentially the old piles are still intact.”

In conclusion, Meany stressed that, “The Ferry Building will serve the entire City of San Francisco, not just the commuters, although it will certainly be a transportation hub. Our program is really about actually drawing in San Franciscans, as well as commuters and tourists.” Cathy Simon adds, “The Ferry Building is poised once again to be the center of the Bay Area’s regional transportation network and at the heart of its civic life.”

The restored Ferry Building will open on the first day of spring, March 21, 2003.

The James R. Herman International Cruise Terminal

The new landmark on the San Francisco waterfront will be the $300 million James R. Herman International Cruise Ship Terminal. After a number of years in the planning phase and after passing through a gauntlet of environmental and regulatory hurdles, the new terminal is set to become a reality on the waterfront, with groundbreaking anticipated by the Port before the end of 2003.
Completion of the new cruise terminal can’t come too soon for the Port of San Francisco, since more and more cruises are originating from San Francisco rather than from other West Coast ports. As a result, the present Pier 35 Cruise Terminal at the base of Telegraph Hill has become increasingly unable to handle the large ships and the growing number of passengers. Several years ago, the Port chose Pier 30/32 in the less congested South Beach area as the site for a new cruise terminal. Bids went out, and early in 2001, San Francisco Cruise Terminal, LLC, headed by Australian-based Lend Lease USA, was awarded exclusive rights to develop the new cruise terminal.

The San Francisco City Planning Commission recently voted unanimously to approve the project’s Environmental Impact Report. That decision was reached after environmental groups, including Bluewater Network, dropped their objections to the project following the adoption of mitigation measures. Those measures will ensure that incoming cruise ships will respect the integrity and the environment of San Francisco Bay and include:
• prohibiting cruise ships from discharging ballast water until technologies preventing the spread of invasive species are installed,
• prohibiting ships from discharging wastewater into the Bay, and
• adopting an air emissions reduction program that will include an incentive plan for ship operators.
Enforcement measures and monitoring programs are to be established.

Even with the approval of the EIR by the City’s Planning Commission, there are still problems ahead for the proposed terminal, since some nearby neighborhood groups may threaten legal action to stop the project. In addition, the project still requires extensive reviews and approvals by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the Port Commission, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, and the City Planning Commission. Nevertheless, the Port still estimates that construction will start before the end of 2003.