S.F. Housing Gets Major Shot in Arm : Fillmore Center Will Be Largest Single Residential Project

SAN FRANCISCO â€”  Come September--a little over a year after ground was broken--residents of this city will be able to move into affordable, close-in apartments a few minutes from Union Square and the financial district.

In a city where housing is very limited and new housing is almost unheard of, the $130-million, 1,113-unit Fillmore Center projectrepresents the largest single addition to this city’s housing stock in 20 years, according to Thomas Numainville, vice president of Housing Associates Inc., the Sausalito-based developer.

The five-square-block occupies nine acres bounded by Geary Boulevard, Turk, Webster and Steiner streets in the Western Addition.

After a series of abortive development attempts, the land is finally being transformed from a 17-year eyesore owned by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency to a mixed-use development that will have 73,000 square feet of space for shops and restaurants and a 4.5-acre waterscaped park, designed by Don Brinkerhoff of Lifescapes Inc., Newport Beach.

It’s no secret that a number of companies have been leaving San Francisco in recent years because of the lack of moderately priced housing, Numainville said. Projects such as Fillmore Center will help reverse the trend, keeping the option of living in the city open for those who want to exercise it.

“We’re aiming this project at people who make $20,000 to $40,000 a year--the forgotten market for housing in most cities,� Numainville said, adding that 20% of the units will be reserved for tenants eligible for rent subsidies.

Subsidized rents will range from $595 a month for studio units to $929 a month for the three-bedroom ones. Market-rate rents will range from $700 a month for a studio unit to $1,700 for a three-bedroom unit.

Designed by the San Francisco office of Los Angeles-based Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall, the massive project will consist of 15 high-rise and mid-rise buildings when it is completed next year.

The first 135 units to be completed will be in a 12-story apartment and retail building under construction at Fillmore and O’Farrell streets, just south of the famed Fillmore Auditorium.

Construction of Fillmore Center utilizes a fast-track approach--in this case a “tunnel form� system that casts the walls and decks monolithically.

Speeds Construction

With the tunnel form method, pioneered in Europe several years ago and used widely in Florida, a floor can be finished every week, rather than a floor every nine working days under traditional methods, according to Gordon Stankowski, project manager for Dillingham Construction Inc., the contractor.

He added that reinforced concrete is used throughout the project, resulting in interior walls that don’t need to be drywalled. The fast-track approach was necessary at Fillmore Center to meet the construction timetable of 27 months, Stankowski said.

Like so many others in California, Donald Tishman, president of Housing Associates, is a transplant from the Midwest--Columbus, Ohio, in his case. He moved to the Bay Area in 1980 after a successful career in developing multi-family housing throughout the country from his base in Ohio.

One of the requirements of developing Fillmore Center was a strong minority participation--especially blacks, because of the population mix in the Western Addition. Two previous attempts by minority developers to build on the site foundered because of lack of financing, so the community was adamant about minority participation in Tishman’s project.

Financing was difficult for Tishman, as well, with local institutions turning him down at every turn, but he finally obtained construction financing from New York-based Citicorp Real Estate Inc., a unit of Citibank.

Construction loan participants were all foreign banks: Canada’s Bank of Nova Scotia and Japan’s Sanwa Bank Ltd., Sumitomo Trust and Banking Co. Ltd. and Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank Ltd.

Minority Participation

The permanent loan is from the Federal National Mortgage Assn. (Fannie Mae).

Minority participation in the project was achieved in a number of ways:

--Minority organizations, including Fillmore Associates and West Bay Local Development Corp., are involved in the project; the latter organization--a unit of the Third Baptist Church--will own and operate Fillmore Center’s $2-million, 16,000-square-foot community center, which will be available for public use.

--A strong affirmative action policy with the contractor is providing minority representation for the 2,000 construction jobs. Too, a similarly strong program will ensure that minorities will be well represented in the 200 permanent jobs needed to run the project, as well as the hundreds of jobs in the stores and restaurants.