| Rincon Hill | |
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| — Neighborhood of San Francisco — | |
| Rincon Hill neighborhood viewed from across the San Francisco Bay. | |
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Rincon Hill
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| Coordinates: | |
| Government | |
| • Board of Supervisors | Jane Kim |
| • State Assembly | Tom Ammiano (D) |
| • State Senate | Mark Leno (D) |
| • U.S. House | Nancy Pelosi (D) |
| Area[1] | |
| • Total | 0.2 km2 (0.096 sq mi) |
| • Land | 0.2 km2 (0.096 sq mi) |
| Population (2008)[1] | |
| • Total | 1,532 |
| • Density | 6,155.2/km2 (15,942/sq mi) |
| ZIP Code | 94105 |
| Area code(s) | 415 |
Rincon Hill is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. It is one of San Francisco's 44 hills, and one of its original "Seven Hills."
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Rincon Hill is one of many hills located in the greater South of Market area of San Francisco, located just south of the Financial District. The top of the hill serves as the anchorage and touch-down for the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge. Recently it is transitioning from a former industrial district into a high-density residential neighborhood.[2] The hill is about 100 feet (30 m) tall.
During and immediately following the Gold Rush, the most prestigious residential neighborhoods in San Francisco were located south of Market Street on Rincon Hill and in the nearby neighborhood known as Happy Valley (centered around First and Market Streets). With the advent of cable cars in the 1870s, the residential trend shifted towards new mansions built on the taller hills north of Market Street, especially Nob Hill.[3] The Second Street Cut of 1869, which sliced through Rincon Hill to reach industrial areas to the south, also contributed to the decline of Rincon Hill as a fashionable residential area. The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and the resulting fire destroyed the remaining Rincon Hill mansions. It was rebuilt as an industrial and maritime district, benefiting from its proximity to the Port of San Francisco and the Bay Bridge, completed in 1936. However, as the city's industrial and maritime industries declined (as in most US cities), the area became underutilized and rundown.[4]
While its potential for housing development has long been recognized due to its proximity to downtown, blight prevented its effective redevelopment. In 1985, the city adopted an area plan for Rincon Hill in the city's General Plan, zoning this area adjacent to downtown for high-density residential development.[5] However, due to the presence of the former elevated Embarcadero Freeway surrounding the neighborhood, development in the area was slow coming, suffered from mediocre architecture, and lacked the pedestrian-oriented streets and open spaces emblematic of San Francisco's cherished neighborhoods. After the physical and psychological barrier of the Embarcadero Freeway (damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake) was removed in the early 1990s, the area within walking distance of downtown rocketed in attractiveness.
In August 2005, the City adopted a new Plan for Rincon Hill, which revised the 1985 Plan with three major elements:
Recent downtown residential development in Vancouver served as a model for this new plan. The tall, residential towers sprouting in this area stretch up to 60 stories tall like One Rincon Hill and will offer tremendous views of the entire Bay Area, for those fortunate enough to afford them. Many people hope that this massive highrise development will spruce up Rincon Hill and, through the thousands of dwelling units coming onto the market, put a damper on San Francisco's housing crunch.[6]
Concerns abound that a significant portion of these new luxury units are being purchased by the regional and global elite for pied-à-terres and vacation homes. Unlike other San Francisco neighborhoods experiencing gentrification pains, Rincon Hill historically has had very little housing (save for a few homeless shelters), thus few are being displaced by new development. However, while developers are paying unprecedented mitigation fees for both community infrastructure (new parks, street narrowing) and human services (for the homeless who were displaced), so far all of the developers who have built in Rincon Hill to date have opted to build their required affordable housing off site (as is permitted for almost all new development citywide) in other portions of the South of Market.(The City's Inclusionary Housing ordinance currently requires that if developers opt to build their Below Market Rate units off-site that they must build them within 1 mile of the primary project site).
New concerns have developed in the midst of the economic recession and the collapse of the housing market of the late 2000s that fueled the construction boom in Rincon Hill. Many condominium projects have been indefinitely put on hold, or canceled all together, as the construction of the north tower of the Rincon Hill complex, a twin to the first tower has also been put on indefinite hold due to economic fears and low demand.[7]
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