Once upon a time, there was a lovely condominium community of 288 families at 201 Harrison Street, San Francisco, in the lovely neighborhood of Rincon Hill. It has a nice big center courtyard, with a blue-watered swimming pool, heated environmental soundly with solar panels. The sun shines beautifully on the many flowers in the garden. Birds come to sing in the trees. Gentle breeze blows through the courtyard, clearing the air. It is a wonderful and healthy place to raise a young family, and many residents have small children.

To the south of the twin towers of Bay and Crest are a couple of abandoned warehouses, which has the addresses of 430 Main and 429 Beale. South of that is the Caltran Bay Bridge service yard. When BayCrest Towers were built in 1991, no one imagined that anyone will want to build in that narrow slip of land.

Well, Portland Pacific Main LLC thinks they can make money by building on those lots. To maximize their profitability, their building is essentially an 84 ft high dam (in red) which blocks the entire southern side of the BayCrest Towers. That dam will turn the BayCrest center court into a deep dark well, blocking light and air flow. The side that faces BayCrest is a blank, windowless wall.

According to many qualified wind and dispersion experts, the auto exhaust from the neighboring Bay Bridge onramps will be trapped by that wall. (See the many expert studies at the document section.) This effect can be easily understood if you have seen how smoggy Pasadena is, at the foot of the Sierra Madre. This happens when the wind sweeps the pollution up from LA and are then stopped by the mountain.

The BayCrest residents are fighting for their rights, as tax paying citizens of San Francisco, to have a healthy living environment. The developer has fooled the SF Planning Commission with their talk of "Affordable Housing", "LEED Certified", and "Contribution to the Neighborhood Fund". How can a building be LEED when it turns its neighbor into an environmental nightmare? The whole Rincon Hill neighborhood will be blighted by such inconsideration. We are appealing to the Board of Supervisors to address this wrong!

We have hired an architectural firm that proposed an alternate design that works for that lot, without needing to cause environment damage to its neighbors. (Shown in cut-away view at right. Also see in document section. ) We have also hired a CPA firm to work through the proforma for this new design, which shows that it is financially feasible for the developer to adopt this new design. All we are asking is for the developer to lower his greed a little bit.

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