Two very interesting things developing here today. First the fun: The final decision on which tower will be built atop the new Transbay Terminal has come. It is a 1,200 foot tower (Empire State is 1250), with a 5.4-acre rooftop park (at the moment called City Park) atop a new terminal. Access to the park will be via funicular railway through a grove of oak trees from "Mission Square", a huge covered square on Mission St. It will be built by architecture firm Pelli Clarke, who built the twin Petronas Towers in Kaula Lumpur, Malaysia, which were the tallest buildings in the world until the Burj Dubai passed it very recently. It will house local and East Bay buses, with a direct connection to the Bay Bridge. In the future, it will house commuter trains to San Jose (Caltrain) and hopefully someday CHSR (California High-Speed Rail). It will likely have an one-block long underground tunnel connecting the station to Montgomery Station. Therefore, it will, in effect, if all is built, house BART trains, MUNI metro underground trains, MUNI trolley-bus lines, MUNI hybrid bus lines, AC (Alameda County) Transit buses, Caltrain to San Jose and CHSR trains to Sacramento, San Jose, Oakland, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego. Grand Central indeed. Add to that the Renzo Piano plan to build 5 towers accross the street, two of which (The Twin Towers...... i know, i know, i know, dear god) would also be 1200 feet. I think that would help make the height of the transbay tower look a little less silly. The new San Francisco will begin to play in the same league as Chicago and New York.
The other interesting tidbit, is that Ed Jew, Supervisor in the Sunset was here in my work building today, and news teams from around the bay were present, as Jew was arraigned for yet another federal felony count. The first count is of bribery, and the new one is of mail fraud. He allegedly solicited a bribe through the mail. He is also charged by the state with somewhere around 8 counts of electoral fraud, as he registered to vote and voted in the Sunset, when his actual residence was in Burlingame, a separate city near SFO. If convicted of any of these 10 or so federal and state counts, he will surely be removed from his supervisorial position and for the federal crimes, he will likely face jail time.
Look here for pictures: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?o=0&f=/c/a/2007/09/21/BAO7S9J2H.DTL
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