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SAN FRANCISCO BUSINESS TIMES | “The last two years have been about re-imagining places for our emerging economy and what kind of environment helps facilitate that,” said Alexa Arena, vice president of Forest City. Exactly how those ideas will translate on a larger scale into bricks and mortar — actual office towers, public plazas, apartment buildings, galleries — is something that will be hammered out over a two- to three-year public planning process that will start now, she says.
The San Francisco Business Times describes that with their submission of the a preliminary project assessment application, Forest City and Hearst Corp are proposing to build 1.3 million square feet of commercial space, 700 units of housing and a wide array of cultural and arts uses at Fifth and Mission streets. “We are creating a central social district and to do that you need constant activity,” Arena added in an article with J.K. Dineen.
Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the urban think-tank SPUR, said the project is the biggest opportunity to come to the city in a long time. "They are trying to do something which we all talk about but which is rarely done: a truly mixed-use project. Their model of a center for innovation is something they have already prototyped. It’s not just an idea.”