High Noon on Berry Street

Nibbi Bros. joins a growing list of developers and general contractors who are remaking Mission Bay's Berry Street into a full-grown residential community.

By Robert Carlsen

The Mission Bay redevelopment project in San Francisco keeps rolling along with two Nibbi Bros. housing projects under way on a currently torn-up section of Berry Street, located between Fourth and Fifth streets two blocks from AT&T Park (formerly SBC Park, home of the San Francisco Giants).

San Francisco-based Nibbi's lineup includes the $38 million 355 Berry Street market-rate rental housing project and the $30 million 420 Berry Street affordable rental housing project.

These projects join five other in-progress developments along that section of Berry Street, including two residential buildings by Signature Properties at 255 and 235 Berry, Webcor Builders' massive 17-story and nine-story Avalon at Mission Bay mixed-use complex at Fourth and Berry, Cahill's Mission Creek Senior Housing and Opus West's Park Terrace at Mission Bay condominium building.

Catellus Development Corp., which owns most of the land in Mission Bay, including the University of San Francisco's Mission Bay campus, has reported that 11,000 residents will eventually live in the area. Catellus is spending $200 million on public infrastructure there.

355 Berry will offer 193 units on four stories of wood-frame housing and 193 parking spaces on a two-level concrete podium. Completion is scheduled for June 2007.

The owner is San Mateo-based Urban Housing Group and the architect is Seidel/Holzman of San Francisco, whose team includes Alexander Seidel, FAIA, project designer; Kristin Gonsar, AIA, project architect; and Stacy Holzman, PE, project manager.

This high-density project off Mission Creek also features a series of landscaped courtyards.

Mike Williams, Nibbi Bros.' assistant project manager, said the company's Nibbi Concrete division started concrete pouring in December, beginning with a slab on grade and now finishing up the second podium level.

advertisement

"During the last couple of months, with all the other projects going on here, there must have been 50 or 60 concrete trucks rumbling along Berry every other day," Williams said.

He added that the wood framing would begin this month.

With the street torn up and a very restrictive footprint for the 180,000-sq.-ft. site, Williams said the Nibbi team is finding creative ways to pour and stage.

Meanwhile, excavation and infrastructure work was scheduled to be completed this month at 420 Berry, which will feature 236 affordable apartments within five multistoried wood-frame structures across the street from the Caltrain railroad tracks between Fifth and Sixth streets. It will offer studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments and 171 surface parking spaces as well as 10 motorcycle spaces. The project is scheduled for completion in May 2007.

The owner is The Related Cos. of Irvine, one of the largest apartment landlords in the United States, and the architect is San Francisco-based David Baker & Partners.

David Baker's design - by lead architect Ian Dunn -- features bays and recesses, pedestrian entries, and two garden notches. A curving internal street, providing street parking spaces separated with trees planted in the street, runs through the site behind the urban apartments. On the other side, a row of three-story townhouses, containing studios at grade and two-level walk-up townhouses above, buffer sound from the railroad tracks.

Nibbi's senior project manager, Greg Narvick, who has also worked on Nibbi's Cinnabar Commons and Rich Sorro Commons housing projects in the city, said the complex will be "visuallyappealing, with an array of colors and sloped roofs."

As with Nibbi's 355 Berry project, Narvick said the main challenges are "access and sequence problems" having to do with a limited footprint and the hubbub from other nearby construction projects.

Narvick added that this project also conforms to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency's affordable housing construction requirement to hire local minorities and women.