After Decades Of Waiting, New Housing Units Taking Shape On San Francisco's Treasure Island
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) – It took a quarter century of planning, but a new Treasure Island is starting to take shape in San Francisco Bay.
On Wednesday, Mayor London Breed received a tour of what will be a massive addition to the city's housing stock, and the Bay's ferry fleet.
"We can't stop here," Breed said. "This has been a project that's been over 20 years in the making. And it should not take us long to get housing built in San Francisco."
Breed toured something that could be described as a housing development. It could also be called the wholesale transformation of two San Francisco islands, from the new water tanks atop Yerba Buena, to the massive earth redistribution on Treasure Island.
But the focus on Wednesday was on the two buildings nearing completion, one visible from the Bay Bridge with 124 mostly market rate condos, along with a 105-unit building for homeless veterans.
"Eight-thousand units of housing that's being scheduled for Treasure Island," said Sherry Williams of One Treasure Island. "And over 2,000 of them will be affordable units."
So the two buildings mark the very start of a massive build out on top of hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure improvements. And that includes the mode of transportation the mayor took over for Wednesday's tour, the new Treasure Island Ferry, set to begin service on January 1st.
"So long as it's a reasonable rate, think I'll probably take that more than the bus," said Treasure Island resident Gregg Dockins.
Dockins says he, and other residents know time in their old housing in short, and they'd like to think there will be a place for them on the new T.I.
"I'm not entirely certain how, moving forward, the Treasure Island management is going to go about these things," Dockins said. "Whether those of us who have lived here for a long period of time or going to get priority in those new units, or if we have to apply like everybody else."
Those questions may take a long time to get answered. The project, which has been dogged by safety concerns, has moved slowly thus far. The timeline for completion is a long one.
"Well it's probably another 15 years for full buildout, through 2035, 2036," said Robert Beck of the Treasure Island Development Authority. "The transformation you're going to see in the next 2 1/2, three years, is going to be remarkable."
