Will Treasure Island become the next Mercer Island?

[fuzzyearlobes]

Growing up in West Seattle, and living in SF for the last 7 years...I really doubt that it will get to the point that MI is. I know they have grand plans for Treasure Island, but the facts are that the majority of TI has some form of toxic soil, and there is low income housing sitting right on top of it. It will take a long long time to "kick out" the low income residents and clean up the soil enough so that the yuppies who would inevitably end up settling there wouldnt find something to complain and sue over.

[bmw335xi]

I heard there was a push to develop it in 2005, but that was during the boom. There are also dangers about the island since it's a landfill, it could sink in the ocean during a major earthquake. Also because of it's past use there are toxins in the air that MAY increase cancer rates. I say build the new 49ers stadium on the island instead of Santa Clara .

[DMenscha]

Hard to imagine the demographic of Mercer Island draped on TI.

Love the stadium idea!

[415_s2k]

I also spent a chunk of my childhood as well as about a year and a half of my adult life in Seattle, and then when I moved back to San Francisco a year ago, I lived on Treasure Island for six months.

My roommate was awful, which was the main reason I left. I actually liked it out there otherwise. First of all, it reminds me of my childhood on military bases... second of all, it's kind of cool being "in" San Francisco and being a short bus or car ride to SoMa, but then having a yard and being able to leave your window open at night and not hear anything.

There have been plans and whatnot to redevelop Treasure Island for some time, and I doubt that it will happen at any point in the next couple decades, at least. Why? A few reasons:

1. Radium in the groundwater
2. Plutonium in the groundwater
3. Asbestos in the groundwater
4. Landfill = liquefication during earthquake = unstable land, especially for a 60-story tower like they want to build there.
5. Social stigma: it used to be a navy base, then it was low-income housing... with radioactive exclusion zones on it... not the sort of place that upper-class, health-obsessed faux-liberals are going to beat down the door moving to.
6. Even if development plans go through, they call for primarily vertical living spaces (40-60 stories per tower) as opposed to a bunch of big houses (this would never get the OK from the SF board of supervisors), so it'd never have a Mercer Island-like vibe. There are some officer houses available for rent on the Yerba Buena portion, but not enough to really affect the feeling of the place.
7. Although the US gov't is currently paying for the residential areas to be cleaned up, there's still a huge portion of the island that hasn't been touched, and this is where contamination is the worst. This would take years in its own right.
8. The island is too "soft" to accomodate larger buildings as it is. If they wanted to build multiple towers, we're talking billions and billions of investment dollars to more or less rebuild the island. Where are those billions going to come from? The govenrment isn't interested, and neither are most investors and developers. They'd have to rebuild the seawalls, then they'd have to get rid of the current soil and redo everything so it's stable... the foundations of any tower would have to go all the way down through the island, to the bottom of the Bay, and then down further before the eventually hit bedrock stable enough to support such a massive structure.

In a nutshell... don't hold your breath

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by 415_s2k

I also spent a chunk of my childhood as well as about a year and a half of my adult life in Seattle, and then when I moved back to San Francisco a year ago, I lived on Treasure Island for six months.

My roommate was awful, which was the main reason I left. I actually liked it out there otherwise. First of all, it reminds me of my childhood on military bases... second of all, it's kind of cool being "in" San Francisco and being a short bus or car ride to SoMa, but then having a yard and being able to leave your window open at night and not hear anything.

There have been plans and whatnot to redevelop Treasure Island for some time, and I doubt that it will happen at any point in the next couple decades, at least. Why? A few reasons:

1. Radium in the groundwater
2. Plutonium in the groundwater
3. Asbestos in the groundwater
4. Landfill = liquefication during earthquake = unstable land, especially for a 60-story tower like they want to build there.
5. Social stigma: it used to be a navy base, then it was low-income housing... with radioactive exclusion zones on it... not the sort of place that upper-class, health-obsessed faux-liberals are going to beat down the door moving to.
6. Even if development plans go through, they call for primarily vertical living spaces (40-60 stories per tower) as opposed to a bunch of big houses (this would never get the OK from the SF board of supervisors), so it'd never have a Mercer Island-like vibe. There are some officer houses available for rent on the Yerba Buena portion, but not enough to really affect the feeling of the place.
7. Although the US gov't is currently paying for the residential areas to be cleaned up, there's still a huge portion of the island that hasn't been touched, and this is where contamination is the worst. This would take years in its own right.
8. The island is too "soft" to accomodate larger buildings as it is. If they wanted to build multiple towers, we're talking billions and billions of investment dollars to more or less rebuild the island. Where are those billions going to come from? The govenrment isn't interested, and neither are most investors and developers. They'd have to rebuild the seawalls, then they'd have to get rid of the current soil and redo everything so it's stable... the foundations of any tower would have to go all the way down through the island, to the bottom of the Bay, and then down further before the eventually hit bedrock stable enough to support such a massive structure.

In a nutshell... don't hold your breath

Yeah pretty much