UCSF Mission Bay is a new 43-acre campus located in the emerging Mission Bay neighborhood in San Francisco. The campus was originally planned in 1999 to accommodate approximately 2.65 million square feet of research, clinical, housing, and support facilities. By 2009, the campus had rapidly grown to a point where 73% of the original site was either built-out or under construction, with significant additional development entitlement remaining.
The purpose of this study was to review and update the prior master plan with specific focus on:
- Maximizing the development opportunity on the remaining parcels.
- Investigating opportunities for increasing the approved development envelope (height, massing, etc.) on opportunity sites while retaining and improving the quality of life for researchers, students, residents and visitors to the campus.
The Phase Two Study explored development alternatives. The impetus for the study was to consider the potential for increasing development beyond the current 2.65 million gross square foot entitlement. The alternatives included elements to enhance the campus pedestrian environment and outdoor recreation; provide options for additional housing; reassess parking supply, demand and locations; and evaluate land use locations, building footprints, massing and design. The scope of work included numerous meetings and outreach efforts with the University community, representatives of the surrounding Mission Bay and Potrero Hill neighborhoods, and various departments of the City of San Francisco. Potential development opportunity sites were defined based on this initial research.
Site analysis revealed a variety of other potential issues that have emerged in the development of the campus to date including poorly scaled and designed open spaces, awkward relationships between ground floor building design and uses and adjacent pedestrian spaces, quality of campus walkways and connectors, and pedestrian/vehicular conflicts on public streets that surround and penetrate the campus. In addition, a new Women’s and Children’s Hospital is being constructed on a 14.5-acre site which will expand the overall campus area to 57 acres.
The study addressed these issues with the following recommendations:
- Enhance the pedestrian environment through landscape improvements.
- Encourage active ground-floor uses in new buildings.
- Implement minor adjustments to existing open spaces to create protected areas from wind and flat lawn spaces for informal play.
- Focus critical mass in select areas rather than scattered across campus to energize outdoor spaces.
Vehicular circulation and parking improvements were addressed in the study to encourage transit and shuttle use with vehicular movement remaining on the periphery roads to support a pedestrian and bicycle-friendly inner campus. The development alternatives provide the University with the flexibility to expand in a variety of different ways while providing an improved pedestrian environment that creates a vibrant, open, urban campus.
Program analysis, 3-D site capacity studies, site improvement plans, photosimulations, and guideline diagrams were provided to guide future develepment.
