Sansome and Broadway. Source: Mithun | Solomon

Affordability with flair near downtown

In an area that once suffered in-city freeway blight, this mixed-use housing project creates a beautiful urban streetwall with modern sensibility.

In the middle of the last century, a new network of elevated highways slashed through San Francisco’s delicate historic neighborhoods. The most harmful of those was the Embarcadero Freeway along the city’s northern waterfront.

After the Loma Prieta earthquake, the Embarcadero was demolished—reconnecting the city to the water and opening new areas for development. Sansome and Broadway, a four-building project with 156 affordable residences on opposite sides of an urban thoroughfare, completes the neighborhood’s rebirth.

“They are timeless, graceful buildings that provide low-income residents, many of whom came from very unstable living conditions, with stable and beautiful homes in the heart of the city,” says Kim Piechota, Development Manager, Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC).

The project incorporates first-floor shops, community rooms, administrative and social services, neighborhood child-care, internal courtyards, and a roof deck to make life more comfortable for low-income residents.

Sansome and Broadway courtyard. Source: Mithun | Solomon

Many urban poor suffer not only from economic hardship but also isolation and the stigma of squalid housing—Sansome and Broadway offers a pride of place. “It is a most wonderful example of good design applied to housing for people of modest means—demonstrating that thoughtful, not necessarily expensive, design, can uplift people’s everyday lives,” says the former chair of the CCDC.

Sansome and Broadway inserts affordable residences, with flair, into an area dominated by office, converted warehouse, and industrial buildings. The buildings are clearly places to live, but they are similar in massing to nearby commercial structures. The well-detailed, budget-constrained buildings are contemporary—yet they fit comfortably with the San Francisco vernacular style and geography.

Two quite different facades help Sansome and Broadway descend a steep hill looking towards the Bay. Source: Mithun | Solomon

Neighbors at first reacted negatively to affordable housing, but they wound up welcoming the development. This project began facing hostile neighborhood groups “and ended as a complete lovefest with neighbors, public officials, tenants, and project sponsors celebrating the opening of Phase II with the Mayor and Chinese lion-dancers,” according to Mithun | Solomon, the designers, who won a CNU Charter Award in 2016.

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