When I took the China Basin beat, I had an idea that there was some urban renewal happening there. A remnant of an old memory surfaced... I vividly recalled a panhandler gesturing to some dirt lots, saying: "We used to live here before they tore down the projects." But I couldn't distinctly place the memory from so long ago, so I geared up my street bike and headed south from the Embarcadero at the foot of Market St.
The dirt lots were there all right, but I needed to do my digging at the library to find whether there had ever been public housing in what's now China Basin (the waterfront area also known as Mission Bay located between the Mission Creek Harbor and Mariposa). Although I'm still trying to find out whether or not there had been public housing there, a search of Chronicle archives and the Planning Commission records showed that speculation and urban plans for the waterfront area had been stymied time and again over the years since 1961 or earlier. Sorting through the tangled web left by conflicting business and residential interests over time only led to the question: "Why is the area south of Pac Bell Park still such a mess?"
A few pictures of the area posted here include a crumbling jetty like so many other decrepit remains that dot the landscape, warning signs that fail to keep street dwellers out of off-limit areas, and a huge sign about a sewage-treatment "odor-control" project that could use some refining...a lot of refining, if you get the drift. Those are some of the more obvious signs of things amiss here, but are they the cause of the real problem, or just effects?
At least one environmentalist, Robert Da Costa, says that landfill like the China Basin area is subject to liquefaction during earthquakes. Some of the snapshots of the sagging structures at the waterline seem to bear out this probable reason for the haphazard development of the neighborhood. I'll post more pictures later.
The dirt lots were there all right, but I needed to do my digging at the library to find whether there had ever been public housing in what's now China Basin (the waterfront area also known as Mission Bay located between the Mission Creek Harbor and Mariposa). Although I'm still trying to find out whether or not there had been public housing there, a search of Chronicle archives and the Planning Commission records showed that speculation and urban plans for the waterfront area had been stymied time and again over the years since 1961 or earlier. Sorting through the tangled web left by conflicting business and residential interests over time only led to the question: "Why is the area south of Pac Bell Park still such a mess?"
A few pictures of the area posted here include a crumbling jetty like so many other decrepit remains that dot the landscape, warning signs that fail to keep street dwellers out of off-limit areas, and a huge sign about a sewage-treatment "odor-control" project that could use some refining...a lot of refining, if you get the drift. Those are some of the more obvious signs of things amiss here, but are they the cause of the real problem, or just effects?
At least one environmentalist, Robert Da Costa, says that landfill like the China Basin area is subject to liquefaction during earthquakes. Some of the snapshots of the sagging structures at the waterline seem to bear out this probable reason for the haphazard development of the neighborhood. I'll post more pictures later.
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