Diversion to supply Sacramento area and the East Bay

Glen Martin, Chronicle Environment Writer; Tuesday, May 8, 2007

(05-08) 04:00 PDT Freeport, Sacramento County — Government officials and environmentalists broke ground Monday on a new Sacramento River water diversion system, deeming it a historic project that sets a precedent for state water distribution in an era of global warming and drought.

The Freeport Regional Water Project ends a 35-year legal and political battle. When finished in 2010, it will provide 85 million gallons of water a day to Sacramento County Water Agency (SCWA). Additionally, during drought years, 100 million gallons a day will be delivered to the East Bay Municipal Utility District.

 

“This is the moment we’ve been waiting for,” said Douglas Wallace, the environmental affairs officer for EBMUD. “It’s a good deal all around.”

Lt. Gov. John Garamendi said the project ends one of the longest battles in California’s water wars.

The project “only happened because … communities decided to work together instead of fighting it out in court,” he said.

Plenty of contentious legal skirmishing preceded the project, however. The original dispute grew out of a 1970 contract between EBMUD and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation that would have permitted the utility to divert 150 thousand acre feet of water a year from the American River, a relatively pristine tributary of the Sacramento.

Two years later, two environmental groups, Environmental Defense and the Save the American River Association, sued the utility to block the deal.

The county of Sacramento later joined the environmentalists’ suit. Years of litigation followed, with rulings by both the state and U.S. supreme courts. Ultimately, an Alameda Superior Court decision significantly limited EBMUD’s options. Negotiations then ensued with the Freeport project representing a compromise agreement.

The project essentially “takes the straw out of the American and puts it in the Sacramento, where the environmental impacts are fewer,” said Tom Graff, the regional director for Environmental Defense.

Graff said the project accomplishes two main goals of the environmental community: Protection of the lower American River and the promotion of water conservation and wastewater recycling.

Ron Stork, the senior policy advocate for Friends of the River, said the project could also help restore salmon runs on the nearby Cosumnes River.

Sacramento County and the Nature Conservancy have agreed in principle to pipe water to the Cosumnes so fall-run Chinook salmon can get up the river in October when water levels typically are low, Stork said. The Freeport project should provide the county with enough water to meet that goal, he said.

The spirit of cooperation that drove the project worked right down to the neighborhood level.

Sacramento City Councilwoman Bonnie Pannell said residents near the Freeport construction site were originally opposed to the project because they were worried about noise, chemical contamination and falling property values. But an outreach program and community feedback resulted in commitments to move the site farther downstream than originally proposed and reduce operational noise, Pannell said.

“It’s a much better project now, and the community is happy,” she said.

Stork said the project largely succeeded because SCWA and EBMUD “became infected with the notion of radical common sense. I believe they feel they have stewardship over California’s water, and the obligation to use it responsibly.”

The biggest benefit to EBMUD is protection from water shortages during drought or low-water years. The utility provides water to more than 1.2 million East Bay customers.

Garamendi said the project points to new methods for equitably distributing the state’s water during a period of shifting global climates.

“Climate change is real,” he said, “and it will change everything we know of water in California. The snowpack will be 30 to 70 percent less. Our snow melt today is two weeks earlier than it was 10 years ago. We’ll also have greater floods (from precipitation falling as rain rather than snow at high elevations).”

Garamendi predicted that climate change ultimately will force a vast retooling of California’s water storage and delivery system, costing taxpayers billions. The Freeport project, he said, sets the precedent for that inevitable revamping.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/08/WATER.TMP

Around this time each year, thousands make the pilgrimage to the Antelope Valley to see California poppies shining in the fields around Anne Aldrich’s Lancaster home.

“There are fields of orange, just like in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ when you first spot the Emerald City,” Aldrich said.

But not in 2007, as Southern California is poised to experience its driest year on record.

“We don’t have poppies this year. This is about the worst we’ve seen,” she said. “It’s desert-brown.”

The relentlessly dry weather has made this a spring like no other across the region, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem.

Downtown Los Angeles has recorded less than 4 inches of rain since July 1 — less than a quarter of normal. The region was hit Monday with another round of high heat, low humidity and dry winds, prompting officials to issue a red flag warning for brush fires. (It will continue through tonight.)

The effects of the prolonged dryness can be seen and felt all around. Seasonal ponds are cracked dry, leaving no haven for some frog eggs or fairy shrimp to hatch. Some flower-dependent butterflies are staying dormant for another season.

Plants aren’t bearing berries; some oak trees aren’t sprouting acorns. Bees are behaving strangely.

The problem is apparent in Ventura County, where ranchers are selling their cattle early or thinking about moving them to other states. Ranchers’ lands, starved of rainwater, have not grown the natural grasses key to feeding cattle through the spring and summer.

John Harvey, a Ventura County ranch owner for 30 years, said he will have to sell half his herd of 350 mother cows by summer.

“This is the worst year I can ever remember,” said Harvey, president of the Ventura County Cattlemen’s Assn.

A nature hike through the parched hills of Griffith Park offers few of the usual spring blooms.

“Look at how miserable they are, these seeds,” said longtime ranger Giuseppe Pira, pointing to the shriveled berries of a California toyon shrub, which normally should be plump and green in the spring.

Many of the plants in the park show signs of stress. Leaves droop and seed pods are wilted. Even if a shrub’s leaves are green, they are brittle to the touch.

Because there has been so little rain, Pira said, dust is sticking to the leaves, giving them a sickly look and making plants more susceptible to disease.

“This is entirely different in my years of experience, no flowers, no nothing,” Pira said. “Even the bees — they don’t have much to eat.”

Fewer flowers means a poor honey season for California beekeepers, who rely on wildflower nectar to feed their bees.

“It looks like we’re going to have one of the worst years for honey production in Southern California,” said Red Bennett, owner of Bennett’s Honey Farm in Fillmore. “Wildflowers represent about 90% of our honey production.”

During the near-record rainy season two years ago, Bennett’s farm produced 2.3 million pounds of honey. He said he expects to produce “40,000 to 50,000 pounds this year, if that.”

“I think that’s optimistic,” said Bennett, who is buying expensive sugar syrup to keep his bee population alive this year.

“We’re kind of like in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl right now,” Bennett said. “There’s nothing we can do about the weather. We don’t cry about it. Our bankers cry a little bit when they don’t get paid.”

In urban areas, bees are becoming more of a nuisance as they try to find additional sources of water. Los Angeles County agricultural officials have detected a spike in complaints about beehives in buildings. There was even a report of a swarm forming inside a sidewalk water main in Highland Park.

“Once natural sources of water in the hills or mountains are dried up, there’s so many backyard swimming pools and people watering their lawns, forming puddles — it’s attractive,” said Ken Pellman, spokesman for the agricultural commissioner.

The dry weather has resulted in more fires that have been harder to extinguish this winter and spring. A study of moisture levels of plants like sagebrush across Los Angeles County found that they have half the water content this month that they had in May 2006.

Unless there is significant deluge in the next few weeks, which is unlikely, L.A. will set a dryness record this year.

Lush, irrigated lawns and gardens are also attractive for wildlife. That has prompted the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to warn that animals such as deer and rabbits might be tempted to look for succulent vegetation in neighborhoods — and their predators might not be far behind.

“It’s going to be a pretty desperate year,” said Paul Edelman, chief of natural resources and planning at the conservancy.

A resident of La Cañada Flintridge reported to the Theodore Payne Foundation, a native plant center, what she considered to be an extremely rare sight: deer roaming around her subdivision, eating ivy.

Elsewhere in the hillside community, Kitty Petti said she saw a bobcat staring at her as she was unloading items from her car April 10 — the first time she has seen one since she moved into her home 11 years ago.

“The part I found disconcerting was it didn’t head for the hills. It went behind my neighbor’s house,” said the mother of two.

The heat also has Southern Pacific rattlesnakes slithering down from the hills — and into backyards and even homes.

Snake wrangler Bo Sylapich said he is getting three times the normal business for May. He recently was called to actress Sally Field’s Malibu home, where her gardener was bitten by a snake.

The heat, Sylapich said, has awakened snakes from their winter slumber, and as their prey — mostly rodents — search for water, the snakes tag along, taking them closer to water sources.

“Temperatures control their movements,” he said. “They’re just like we are. When we go into air conditioning, they’re looking for air conditioning too. When we come out, they come out.”

Vegetation is parched in forests, and in some spots there will be less surface water for coyotes, bears and mountain lions to drink from, said Stanton Florea, fire information officer for Angeles National Forest.

“There’s not enough green forage,” said Steve Loe, a forest biologist for San Bernardino National Forest.

Though Southern California saw near-record rainfall in 2005, officials are quick to point out it was an aberration. For much of the last decade, the region has experience drought-like conditions, with less rainfall than normal.

The lack of rain has long been a concern as the wild turkey population has dwindled in the San Bernardino forest. Loe worries the turkeys will be particularly hard-hit this year.

Sylapich is concerned, but he’s also philosophical.

“Mother Nature’s having fun with us.”

---

ron.lin@latimes.com

Times staff writer Amanda Covarrubias contributed to this report.

A bill guaranteeing that affordable apartments proposed for a San Fernando Valley veterans campus be solely for veterans passed the House of Representatives on Monday despite claims that it could delay or derail the very housing it seeks to support.

“The bottom line is it stops a housing project for disabled veterans that has been underway for four years now,” said Dora Leong Gallo, chief executive of Community of Friends, a nonprofit developer.

Community of Friends and another nonprofit group, New Directions Inc., with the support of the Department of Veterans Affairs, have been planning to convert two buildings at the VA’s Sepulveda Ambulatory Care Center into about 150 housing units for disabled, homeless vets.

The groups intended to seek low-income tax credits and federal housing funds to renovate the buildings, which were damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

A “veterans-only” requirement would run afoul of federal and state nondiscrimination laws, which means the two nonprofits would have to raise money privately for the $40-million project.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), acknowledges that the housing will be more difficult to fund if his bill passes in the Senate and is signed into law.

But he countered critics who insist that the bill would put a stop to any housing, saying that “dozens and dozens” of other nonprofit agencies have been able to build veterans’ housing without using public money.

New Directions and Community of Friends planned to get around nondiscrimination laws by marketing the units to veterans and giving them preference over non-veterans.

Developers of two similar projects — Century Housing’s Villages at Cabrillo, a 200-veteran complex in Long Beach, and the St. Leo Residence for Veterans, 141 studio apartments run by Catholic Charities in Chicago — were able to use federal funds and rent solely to veterans by using such legally accepted “preference” policies. The two agencies wrote letters in support of the Sepulveda project.

“Certainly, the clear intent of the sponsor, New Directions, is to achieve a veteran-only facility,” said Claude Hutchison, director of the VA’s Office of Asset Enterprise Management. “This is an important project and there’s a strong need for services of this type in the Los Angeles area.”

Los Angeles has one of the largest populations of homeless veterans, estimated at 20,000 to 24,000, out of a nationwide population estimated at 200,000. According to the VA, there are fewer than 1,000 units of long-term housing plus support services for veterans nationwide.

Sherman’s bill also called for putting the project out for competitive bid and to include in the lease guarantees to maintain adequate staffing and an alcohol-free environment. Alcohol is not permitted on the Sepulveda property.

The North Hills West Neighborhood Council initially had concerns about construction noise, traffic and pollution, and whether residents would comply with alcohol rules but came to support the project after meeting with New Directions in 2004.

Last month, however, the council voted to support Sherman’s bill because of concerns that the congressman raised about the 75-year lease the VA was offering.

“I have no doubt that New Directions would run a fine program, and they have such a heart for veterans,” said Lewis Brown, council president.

“But we won’t be here in 75 years. Some of our folks have been in business and real estate and know what a contract means. If you don’t write [specific restrictions] in the lease and someone chooses not to do it, you’re pretty stuck.”

AGOURA HILLS, Calif. — Visitors to Ownit Mortgage Solutions’ offices here are met by an abandoned reception desk and three dying potted plants that appear to have gone months without water.

How appropriate.

Ownit filed for bankruptcy protection late last year; since then, several companies that specialized in loans to people with weak, or subprime, credit have followed it into bankruptcy as the once-thriving business has withered on the vine. Gone are the lavish parties, the extravagant trips and the executive salaries and sales commissions that routinely topped a million dollars.

Lenders like New Century Financial and Ownit, many of them based in Southern California, have cut an estimated 12,000 mortgage jobs in California since the start of 2006, according to MortgageDaily.com, a trade publication. Nationally, 16,000 jobs have been lost.

What used to be a profitable partnership between subprime lenders and Wall Street banks has now degenerated into a cross-country blame game.

Lenders in California say big investment banks encouraged and pushed them to make risky loans. On Wall Street, bank executives say mortgage lenders became sloppy and did not pay enough attention to fraud. Whatever the cause, Ownit provides a vivid example of what went wrong.

William D. Dallas, the founder and chief executive of Ownit, acknowledges loosening lending standards but says he did so reluctantly and under pressure from his investors, particularly Merrill Lynch, which wanted more loans to package into lucrative securities.

He recalls being asked to make more “stated income” loans, in which lenders do not verify the information provided by borrowers and brokers with tax returns, pay stubs or other documentation. The message, he said, was simple: You are leaving money on the table — do more of them.

Mr. Dallas, a trim 51-year-old who has been in the mortgage business for more than 25 years, said he disagreed, but complied.

“If I can sell it at a profit,” he said, “why would I not do it?”

A spokesman for Merrill Lynch denied Mr. Dallas’s assertions, but declined to elaborate.

Mortgage companies like Ownit grew quickly last year by making it easier for home buyers to take out loans without proving their incomes or making down payments.

In retrospect, it was exactly the wrong time to ease credit: interest rates were rising and home prices were cresting after a sharp four-year rally. Many in the industry also suspected that speculation and fraud were rampant in many hot real estate markets on the coasts and in the Southwest.

There is no doubt that the standards in the subprime market deteriorated sharply last year. More than 44 percent of all subprime loans in 2006 were based on limited documents or none at all, up from 38 percent in 2004, according to Lehman Brothers. More than 26 percent of borrowers took out a second mortgage, indicating that they did not have enough savings for a full down payment, up from 14 percent.

But Tom Marano, who heads the mortgage business at Bear Stearns, disputed the contention that Wall Street pressure led to the loosening of credit standards. Investment banks, he said, do not directly make many loans.

“If enough independent companies set standards, that becomes the market,” he said. “Wall Street’s role is largely one where we assess risk, we purchase loans.”

Wall Street, however, is now wading more directly and deeply into the business. Big banks and hedge funds are buying up bankrupt or ailing mortgage companies that did not have enough capital to weather the downturn. These bigger financial players and more diversified lenders like Countrywide Financial may well inherit the subprime business.

And many companies like Ownit are simply fading away.

Last year, Ownit made $9.5 billion in loans, up 15 percent from 2005. Slightly fewer than a quarter of the loans it made in 2005 and 2006, according to data from Moody’s Investors Service, had limited documentation — better than the industry average — but lending to borrowers with lower credit scores increased sharply over that period.

The popularity of stated-income loans, derisively referred to as “liar’s loans” by critics, seemed impervious to evidence that the loans made it easier for borrowers and brokers to commit fraud.

According to a report by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute, for example, one lender found in a sampling of loan applications that the incomes listed on 60 percent of the applications were, on average, 50 percent higher than those on the borrowers’ tax returns.

Lenders liked the loans because they could be processed quickly. Loan officers did not have to verify bank statements, tax returns or other documents.

Borrowers also were charged a higher interest rate, often about 0.5 percentage point higher, making the loans more profitable.

“Lenders didn’t highlight to the borrower that they could save a little bit of money had they provided full documentation,” said Mark H. Adelson, an analyst with Nomura Securities in New York. “Why not get the borrower to pay a little more interest?”

Officials at mortgage companies and Wall Street banks acknowledge that it may be too dangerous to allow borrowers with weak credit who are financing 100 percent of a home’s purchase price to borrow without documentation of their income. But they defend the practice as appropriate for buyers with better credit or those making a substantial down payment, arguing that it helps extend homeownership.

The loans are, proponents say, primarily used by borrowers who are self-employed or who earn money through off-the-books second jobs or child support payments. The practice also helps those relying on incomes of companions or roommates who are not listed on mortgage applications because they have a tarnished credit history.

“The lower-income population doesn’t always have the traditional documentation that the middle-class borrower typically has,” said Mr. Marano of Bear Stearns. “There has been an effort to, frankly, satisfy some of the needs in the housing market by expanding the guidelines.”

That desire to expand homeownership fed Mr. Dallas’s own entrepreneurial fire.

“I am passionate about the normal person owning a home,” said Mr. Dallas, who is also chairman of the Fox Sports Grill restaurant chain and manages the business interests of the Olsen twins. “I think owning a home solves all their problems.”

As he discusses homeownership, Mr. Dallas becomes animated and his voice rises. He fetches copies of a booklet, “Strategic Financing: A Survival Guide for Loan Originators,” he helped write for loan officers and brokers, and points to charts and tables to help explain his thinking. His speaking style seems part revival preacher and part courtroom lawyer.

Mr. Dallas created Ownit from a small mortgage company he and his partners bought in 2003 for $30 million. Two years earlier, he had left First Franklin , a lender he co-founded in 1981 and which was then owned by National City. (Merrill Lynch bought First Franklin last year for $1.3 billion.)

Ownit was different from other subprime lenders. About 70 percent of the company’s loans were made for the purchase of homes, while about 60 percent of all subprime loans were used to refinance existing debts.

Mr. Dallas, a native of Ohio who moved to California as a young adult, said he created Ownit to serve borrowers who earned less than $100,000 and had less than $100,000 in assets, a group he calls the “mass nonaffluents.”

The company was a big lender of 40-year and 45-year mortgages, which Mr. Dallas says are a better way to put moderate- and low-income families into homes than adjustable-rate loans that start with low introductory rates but reset after a few years to much higher rates.

His passion proved compelling. In 2005, Merrill Lynch bought a 20 percent stake in Ownit, whose majority owner was CIVC Partners, a private equity firm in Chicago.

Merrill, along with JPMorgan Chase, also provided Ownit with billions of dollars in credit lines to make mortgages.

But Mr. Dallas’s relationship with Merrill began to sour in 2006 after the bank announced in September that it was buying First Franklin and as defaults on loans Ownit made that year spiked.

Merrill argued that Ownit was contractually obligated to buy back loans made to borrowers who had missed the first few payments. Mr. Dallas asserted his company would not do so because the borrowers made their payments to Ownit before the loans were sold. He further argued that Ownit was not responsible for missed payments after Merrill bought the loans.

The disagreements reached a crisis in early December, when the company’s credit lines were expiring. Merrill and Ownit’s other backers decided against continuing to finance the company, which was losing money.

The squabbling has continued into bankruptcy court. Creditors are opposing a compensation package of as much as $300,000 for Mr. Dallas, arguing that he is not doing much to earn the pay, which would be used to reduce the $1.8 million he owes the company, according to bankruptcy court filings.

When the company’s 800 employees were laid off in December, few had an inkling about its troubles. Many left so quickly that they left behind family pictures, toothbrushes and other personal items.

“We were in disbelief and shock,” said Lisa Tait, an operations manager with 26 years of experience in the business. She said the collapse was different from past downturns because this time there were no warning signs. “A group of us had become very close. Some people were upset; some people were angry.”

Thankfully, she said, most of her colleagues have found other jobs in the healthy Southern California economy. Ms. Tait, 43, returned to Ownit earlier this year to help it through bankruptcy proceedings.

Hallways at the office are lined with boxes filled with loan documents that are waiting to be sorted and sent on to the investors who bought the mortgages. One corner of the former cafeteria is taken up by boxes marked “DEAD,” containing files for loans that were never finished.

Executives are negotiating with regulators on what should be done with all the files, which they are legally required to preserve.

“This is what a bankrupt subprime company looks like,” Mr. Dallas said. “No employees, and lots of files.”

 

Enforcement officers from the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation sat in two cars and guarded the locked gates of Hunts Point Riverside Park in the South Bronx last Wednesday.

“When is the park opening?” they were asked.

“Who are you?” came the reply, delivered without even a glance at the questioner.

“A reporter,” they were told.

“No comment.”

Who would have imagined the hours of a public park would be given on a need-to-know basis? Yet that was the question people in Hunts Point had been asking ever since work on this hidden gem was finished — more or less — last September.

It finally opened this weekend, after hundreds of calls to the city from eager schoolchildren, parents and community organizers who felt slighted that the park’s twisty paths, new benches, grills and boat ramp lay within their sight but out of their reach.

Officially, the lack of a traffic light along the busy street — where tractor-trailers speed to and from the sprawling regional produce market — accounted for part of the delay. The other reason was that even after crossing the intersection, park visitors have to cross an active railroad track that is used by a slow-moving freight train that serves the market. These were hardly unknown problems, yet it still took eight months before the city installed traffic lights and crosswalk lines at the intersection and stationed a flagman by the tracks.

“The city moves in geologic time,” said Adam Green, the executive director of Rocking the Boat, an educational and environmental group that was given special permission to launch hand-built boats from the park last fall. “It moves even slower than that freight train.”

Hunts Point Riverside, also known as Lafayette Avenue Park, is one of two new waterfront parks on the mostly industrial peninsula, which has been enjoying a rebirth in recent years. The other oasis, Barretto Point Park, was carved out of what had once been the site of a paint factory and, later, a squatter’s village of Caribbean-style wooden shacks where not too long ago only free-ranging Bronx chickens and a few hardy souls could enjoy sweeping vistas of the East River. While Barretto Point Park has been open to the public since September, its hours and staffing have been erratic, residents and advocates said, with the park closed sometimes as early as midafternoon in recent months.

Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, said in a telephone interview on Friday that both parks now had enough full-time staff to be open until dusk, especially since the city had allocated more money for staffing and maintenance. He said the opening of Hunts Point Riverside was delayed because it took time to reassure officials at the city’s Department of Transportation that the Parks Department would monitor the railroad crossing until a permanent gate was installed.

“The main thing was to get some parks built in this neighborhood that does not have enough parks,” he said. “You play the cards you are dealt, and you play the best hand. We decided let’s just build a park and then we’ll figure the thing out.”

Such an approach might be seen as the quickest way to make sure the parks are built in the first place. But to some people in this neighborhood — where residents have waged long fights against what was a growth industry in waste transfer stations and scrap yards — the larger issue is how projects are planned in their out-of-the way community. Despite the reassurance of officials, residents choose to remain a bit skeptical, noting for example that the parks are still closing before dusk and that sometimes no park workers are visible.

“We got the parks, that is great and dandy, but how are we going to maintain them?” said Majora Carter, the founder of the environmental group Sustainable South Bronx, who was among the first to envision a riverside park on what had been a dump. “There is a fundamental problem we have had for a long time: unless it is a big, sophisticated project with value to tourists or businesspeople, it’s forgotten. Our parks only serve the people here. But people up here need to know they have access to open space.”

Ms. Carter is among a small group of people who met recently to explore establishing a conservancy for the area’s parks, which would be linked by a greenway ringing the waterfront. The idea is to create a nongovernmental group that would advocate for the parks, making sure their needs did not get lost in the shuffle among the various agencies responsible for them.

At this early point, there is no agreement on whether they should seek philanthropists with deep pockets or press the city into allocating more for these parks in its budget. There are also disagreements over how such a conservancy would approach development projects in the area that would affect open space.

Representative José E. Serrano, who has helped to convene the group, sees its work as part of a larger plan for the area. For years, he and members of his staff have looked at North and South Brother Islands as outposts of natural wonder just a few hundred yards from Hunts Point. He has introduced a bill that would put the two islands and a stretch of mainland just north of them known as Oak Point under the protection of the National Park Service . The bill recognizes the area’s link to the General Slocum tragedy in 1904, when a fire tore through an excursion steamship on the East River and claimed more than 1,000 victims, many of them children. The burning boat beached on North Brother Island.

The congressman sees both his bill and the conservancy as ways of asserting greater local control over areas that some residents don’t even know exist.

“So many people who live in that neighborhood came from the Caribbean, where the water was never far away,” he said. “These people are not foreign to waterways, but in New York they are made to believe they should only care for certain things, but not waterways. I see this as part of the statement we are making in the South Bronx that everything you thought was not for our neighborhood is indeed for our neighborhood.”

Barretto Point Park proves that last point nicely. Until a few years ago the only wildlife to be seen anywhere near it was of the rowdy variety, as revelers drank and danced along Viele Avenue, known for decades as “La Playita,” the beach. Birds now swoop overhead, and fishermen hang out at an adjoining pier.

A winding path cuts through the park, past new benches, the terraced stone of a natural amphitheater and a beach volleyball court. There is even a tiny sliver of sand, making the area live up to its storied name.

“Is that sand artificial?” asked Marcos Torres, who was at the park with his wife and daughter. “There are a lot of snails in it.”

Carlos and Ana Alicea savored their lunch break at the park, slowly walking down to the water to enjoy the panorama. On Wednesday they had better luck than on their first trip to the park last year.

“We used to go to Crotona Park, but we came here when we heard about it,” Mr. Alicea said. “And it was locked.”

He and his wife leaned against the railing, looking at the Hell Gate Bridge and behind it a cluster of skyscrapers. He turned away from those modern marvels and pointed to the amphitheater.

“I like this,” he said. “It looks like the Romans, back in the day.”

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Conquistadors from Spain came, they saw and they were astonished. They had never seen anything in Europe like the bridges of Peru. Chroniclers wrote that the Spanish soldiers stood in awe and fear before the spans of braided fiber cables suspended across deep gorges in the Andes, narrow walkways sagging and swaying and looking so frail.

Yet the suspension bridges were familiar and vital links in the vast empire of the Inca, as they had been to Andean cultures for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. The people had not developed the stone arch or wheeled vehicles, but they were accomplished in the use of natural fibers for textiles, boats, sling weapons — even keeping inventories by a prewriting system of knots.

Carl T. Gossett Jr./The New York Times, left; Adriana von Hagen, center; and Robert Spencer for The New York Times; The first steel section, top, being installed on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1963. The last remaining Inca bridge in Peru, center, was the model for the M.I.T. bridge project. John A. Ochsendorf of M.I.T., above, showing cable made in Peru.

So bridges made of fiber ropes, some as thick as a man’s torso, were the technological solution to the problem of road building in rugged terrain. By some estimates, at least 200 such suspension bridges spanned river gorges in the 16th century. One of the last of these, over the Apurimac River, inspired Thornton Wilder’s novel “The Bridge of San Luis Rey.”

Although scholars have studied the Inca road system’s importance in forging and controlling the pre-Columbian empire, John A.Ochsendorf of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here said, “Historians and archaeologists have neglected the role of bridges.”

Dr. Ochsendorf’s research on Inca suspension bridges, begun while he was an undergraduate at Cornell University, illustrates an engineering university’s approach to archaeology, combining materials science and experimentation with the traditional fieldwork of observing and dating artifacts. Other universities conduct research in archaeological materials, but it has long been a specialty at M.I.T.

Students here are introduced to the multidisciplinary investigation of ancient technologies as applied in transforming resources into cultural hallmarks from household pottery to grand pyramids. In a course called “materials in human experience,” students are making a 60-foot-long fiber bridge in the Peruvian style. On Saturday, they plan to stretch the bridge across a dry basin between two campus buildings.

In recent years, M.I.T. archaeologists and scientists have joined forces in studies of early Peruvian ceramics, balsa rafts and metal alloys; Egyptian glass and Roman concrete; and also the casting of bronze bells in Mexico. They discovered that Ecuadoreans, traveling by sea, introduced metallurgy to western Mexico. They even found how Mexicans added bits of morning-glory plants, which contain sulfur, in processing natural rubber into bouncing balls.

“Mexicans discovered vulcanization 3,500 years before Goodyear,” said Dorothy Hosler, an M.I.T. professor of archaeology and ancient technology. “The Spanish had never seen anything that bounced like the rubber balls of Mexico.”

Heather Lechtman, an archaeologist of ancient technology who helped develop the M.I.T. program, said that in learning “how objects were made, what they were made of and how they were used, we see people making decisions at various stages, and the choices involve engineering as well as culture.”

From this perspective, she said, the choices are not always based only on what works well, but also are guided by ideological and aesthetic criteria. In the casting of early Mexican bells, attention was given to their ringing tone and their color; an unusually large amount of arsenic was added to copper to make the bronze shine like silver.

“If people use materials in different ways in different societies, that tells you something about those people,” Professor Lechtman said.

In the case of the Peruvian bridges, the builders relied on a technology well suited to the problem and their resources. The Spanish themselves demonstrated how appropriate the Peruvian technique was.

Dr. Ochsendorf, a specialist in early architecture and engineering, said the colonial government tried many times to erect European arch bridges across the canyons, and each attempt ended in fiasco until iron and steel were applied to bridge building. The Peruvians, knowing nothing of the arch or iron metallurgy, instead relied on what they knew best, fibers from cotton, grasses and saplings, and llama and alpaca wool.

The Inca suspension bridges achieved clear spans of at least 150 feet, probably much greater. This was a longer span than any European masonry bridges at the time. The longest Roman bridge in Spain had a maximum span between supports of 95 feet. And none of these European bridges had to stretch across deep canyons.

The Peruvians apparently invented their fiber bridges independently of outside influences, Dr. Ochsendorf said, but these bridges were neither the first of their kind in the world nor the inspiration for the modern suspension bridge like the George Washington and Verrazano-Narrows Bridges in New York and the Golden Gate in San Francisco.

In a recent research paper, Dr. Ochsendorf wrote: “The Inca were the only ancient American civilization to develop suspension bridges. Similar bridges existed in other mountainous regions of the world, most notably in the Himalayas and in ancient China, where iron chain suspension bridges existed in the third century B.C.”

The first of the modern versions was erected in Britain in the late 18th century, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The longest one today connects two islands in Japan, with a span of more than 6,000 feet from tower to supporting tower. These bridges are really “hanging roadways,” Dr. Ochsendorf said, to provide a fairly level surface for wheeled traffic.

In his authoritative 1984 book, “The Inka Road System,” John Hyslop, who was an official of the Institute of Andean Research and associated with the American Museum of Natural History, compiled descriptions of the Inca bridges recorded by early travelers.

Garcilasco de la Vega, in 1604, reported on the cable-making techniques. The fibers, he wrote, were braided into ropes of the length necessary for the bridge. Three of these ropes were woven together to make a larger rope, and three of them were again braided to make a still larger rope, and so on. The thick cables were pulled across the river with small ropes and attached to stone abutments on each side.

Three of the big cables served as the floor of the bridge, which often was at least four to five feet wide, and two others served as handrails. Pieces of wood were tied to the cable floor. Finally, the floor was strewn with branches to give firm footing for beasts of burden.

More branches and pieces of wood were strung to make walls along the entire length of the bridge. The side covering, one chronicler said, was such that “if a horse fell on all fours, it could not fall off the bridge.”

Still, it took a while for the Spanish to adjust to the bridges and to coax their horses to cross them. The bridges trembled underfoot and swayed dangerously in stiff winds.

Ephraim G. Squier, a visitor to Peru from the United States in the 1870s, said of the Apurimac River bridge: “It is usual for the traveler to time his day’s journey so as to reach the bridge in the morning, before the strong wind sets in; for, during the greater part of the day, it sweeps up the Canyon of the Apurimac with great force, and then the bridge sways like a gigantic hammock, and crossing is next to impossible.”

Other travelers noted that in many cases, two suspension bridges stood side by side. Some said that one was for the lords and gentry, the other for commoners; or one for men, the other for women.

Recent scholars have suggested that it was more likely that one bridge served as a backup for the other, considering the need for frequent repairs of frayed and worn ropes.

The last existing Inca suspension bridge, at Huinchiri, near Cuzco, is virtually rebuilt each year. People from the villages on either side hold a three-day festival and gather stiff grasses for producing more than 50,000 feet of cord. Finally, the cord is braided into 150-foot replacement cables.

In the M.I.T. class project, 14 students met two evenings a week and occasional afternoons to braid the ropes for a Peruvian bridge replica 60 feet long and 2 feet wide. They were allowed one important shortcut: some 50 miles of twine already prepared from sisal, a stronger fiber than the materials used by the Inca.

Some of the time thus gained was invested in steps the Inca had never thought of. The twine and the completed ropes were submitted to stress tests, load-bearing measurements and X-rays.

“We have proof-tested the stuff at every step as we go along,” said Linn W. Hobbs, a materials science professor and one of the principal teachers of the course.

The students incorporated 12 strands of twine for each primary rope. Then three of these 12-ply ropes were braided into the major cables, each 120 feet long — 60 feet for the span and 30 feet at each end for tying the bridge to concrete anchors.

One afternoon last week, several of the students stretched ropes down a long corridor, braiding one of the main cables. While one student knelt to make the braid and three students down the line did some nimble footwork to keep the separate ropes from entangling, Zack Jackowski, a sophomore, put a foot firmly down on the just-completed braid.

“It’s important to get the braids as tight as possible,” Mr. Jackowski said. “A little twist, pull it back hard, hold the twist you just put in.”

No doubt the students will escape the fate of Brother Juniper, the Franciscan missionary in Wilder’s novel who investigated the five people who perished in the collapse of the bridge of San Luis Rey.

Brother Juniper hoped to discern scientific evidence of divine intervention in human affairs, examples of “the wicked visited by destruction and the good called early to Heaven.”

Alas, he could not; there is some of both good and evil in people. So his written account was judged heretical. He and his manuscript were burned at the stake.

If the students’ bridge holds, they will have learned one lesson: engineering, in antiquity as now, is the process of finding a way through and over the challenges of environment and culture.

By Alexa Aguilar Tribune staff reporter May 8, 2007

Deep underneath a Streeterville street, John Henry Propeck was moving pile after pile of debris and sandy soil to create an underground parking garage for a new 47-story condo building at the corner of Illinois Street and McClurg Court.

Then he scooped up a chunk of metal in the bucket of his backhoe. The next load unearthed a T-shaped bar, then a 40-foot chain.

When he pieced the parts together last month, he realized he had discovered a 200-pound boat anchor buried deep beneath Chicago’s streets.

The anchor is a rusty reminder that the solid ground Chicago is built on wasn’t always so solid, and that boats were once moored in what is now the Streeterville neighborhood. Those who pulled the anchor from the earth are even asking whether it could have belonged to Capt. George Streeter, a gun-running hustler who supposedly ran his vessel aground 450 feet from Lake Michigan’s shore in 1886 and decided to stay put, creating the neighborhood that bears his name.

Streeter is the stuff of Chicago legend, a man who defied city officials who tried to take his “District of Lake Michigan” — the hundreds of acres of landfill that eventually amassed around the beached boat where Streeter and his fellow scofflaws drank, ran brothels and generally reveled in ignoring authority.

Propeck and a few members of the excavation crew knew none of the history until an acquaintance half-jokingly suggested that the anchor could have belonged to Streeter. They fiddled around on the Internet until they found a picture of Streeter standing by his ship, the Reutan, with a similar anchor chained to its prow. “I think it’s pretty interesting,” said Propeck, who has been a construction worker in Chicago for more than 25 years. “I’ve never got nothing like this before. I’ve found safes before with holes bored through them. But nothing like this.”

It would be difficult to verify that the anchor was Streeter’s, said Libby Mahoney, chief curator of the Chicago Historical Society. Its rusted surface and clunky chain bear no lettering or mark other than the number 97.

The anchor appears to be a standard fisherman’s anchor from that era, Mahoney said.

Whether the anchor actually belonged to Streeter’s vessel, the discovery is enough to excite Chicagoans, she said.

“All of this points to the fact that Chicagoans love the history of their city,” she said. “They are proud of it. And they take their history very seriously.”

MCL Companies, the developer of the Park View condos, is considering making the anchor a fixture of the park that will sit adjacent to the property.

Russell Lewis, chief historian of the Chicago History Museum, said the anchor’s discovery is interesting, if only to remind Chicagoans that Streeterville was once in Lake Michigan. It’s possible the anchor was Streeter’s, but it could have been from other vessels that traveled the shoreline, he said.

“That’s the one boat we know,” Lewis said. “That’s why people jump to conclusions. But there are the ones we don’t know about,” whose owners didn’t decide to squat on the land where they wrecked, he said.

Still, Lewis said, it’s a wonderful story and the discoverers should be excited about finding a possible remnant of history.

“It’s a mystery,” he said. “What’s discouraging is that you can reach a point where you just can’t tell for sure.”

Dick Bales, an author of a book about the Great Chicago Fire, is in the midst of writing a volume about Streeter. He also works as assistant regional counsel for Chicago Title, the company that Streeter repeatedly sparred with over his land claims.

The more he researches him, the more he’s learning to doubt any legend surrounding Streeter, even his name, Bales said.

Though Streeter’s famous nickname “Cap Streeter” stems from Streeter’s claim that he was a captain in the Civil War, he never made it past the rank of private, Bales said.

And there is some evidence that the tale of the boat wrecked on the sandbar was made up by Streeter to justify his squatting, Bales said.

“Everything about him is a lie, even his name,” he said.

The variations on the Streeter story make him a favorite of Chicago history lovers.

“He’s fascinating,” Mahoney said. “He’s a great Chicago legend.”

By Graydon Megan Special to the Tribune May 8, 2007

An effort to redevelop an Arlington Heights shopping center will continue despite Monday night’s decision to end an agreement with Target Corp. to anchor the project, officials said.

The Village Board voted unanimously to discontinue plans for the Minneapolis company to build a SuperTarget at the northeast corner of Arlington Heights and Golf Roads.

“With the change in the economic climate, it was no longer beneficial to either party, the village or Target,” said Mayor Arlene Mulder. “There might be proposals down the road. We’ll try to find a financial way to make it work.”

The village established a $19 million tax-increment finance district in 2002 for the 35-acre site, which includes the International Plaza shopping center, Arlin-Golf Plaza center, a restaurant, a closed gas station and several other parcels.

“Target has realized, I think, with the passage of time, increased costs and the pending lawsuits, it doesn’t make economic sense for them to proceed under our own redevelopment agreement,” Village Atty. Jack Siegel said before the board meeting Monday night.

Target representative Brie Heath said the decision was based on economics.

“While we continue to be interested in an additional Target store in Arlington Heights, we have mutually agreed with the village to withdraw our project,” Heath said.

The company has a store at 1700 E. Rand Rd.

Siegel said the tax district remains alive and the village may seek another retailer to anchor the development.

Tenants and business owners in the affected properties, many of which were in line to be razed, hope Target’s withdrawal signals a change.

“It doesn’t make any sense not to kill the TIF,” said Laurie Palepu, who owns a hair salon in International Plaza. “It’s really killing our business.”

Ron Popp, an owner of Arlin-Golf Plaza, said the shadow of the TIF hanging over the area has kept his center nearly vacant.

“When they hear about a TIF, they back away,” he said of potential owners and tenants.

Popp has long disputed the designation of his property as blighted.

“Our [center] was completely rehabbed,” he said. “It’s kind of sad that they have to starve you out. I bet I could clear out Woodfield [shopping center] with the same tactics.”

Three lawsuits have been filed against Arlington Heights over the tax district. The first, by Capital Fitness, an International Plaza tenant doing business as XSports Fitness, was decided in favor of the village in January. But the ruling has been appealed, and the other lawsuits, by the owners of Arlin-Golf Plaza and International Plaza, are pending. The plaintiffs have alleged an abuse of village powers.

Arlington Heights officials said the dissolution of the deal involved no payments to or from the village or Target.

“[There was] no consideration,” Siegel said. “It was mutually agreed.”

Village sources said total project costs, including those related to the bond sale and legal expenses, have not been tabulated.

In response to complaints from tax district tenants and owners about a lack of concern for their future, village officials said they have worked with businesses in four other tax districts, helping them remain in a new development or relocate within the village.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Contractor bids low, counts on making money on incentives

Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer; Tuesday, May 8, 2007

(05-08) 04:00 PDT Sacramento — A Sacramento-area contractor with a reputation for making speedy emergency repairs to highways won the contract to rebuild the collapsed section of the MacArthur Maze on Monday, with a low bid that indicates the work could be completed before Caltrans’ June 27 deadline.

 

An early finish would be in keeping with the transit agency’s quick response to the April 29 collapse of the connector from eastbound Interstate 80 to I-580, which failed when a gasoline tanker on I-880 below crashed and caught fire. The damaged section of I-880, closed since the fire, reopened Monday morning — five days ahead of schedule.

“Caltrans promised the public a swift response to the MacArthur Maze collapse,” agency Director Will Kempton said, “and we are delivering.”

Agency spokesman Bob Haus said at a briefing in Oakland, “Our workers and the contract workers were relentless. They were determined. I’ve never seen such dedication. . . . Some of our guys, I’m not sure if they’ve been able to eat or sleep in the past 10 days.”

C.C. Myers Inc. began work Monday night rebuilding the ruined connector to I-580. The Rancho Cordova (Sacramento County) construction company was awarded the contract after submitting the low bid of $867,075 — an amount well below the Caltrans estimate of $5.2 million and the $20 million the department has set aside for the reconstruction.

Kempton said the bid shows that C.C. Myers is banking on finishing the work early and collecting millions more in incentive payments for a speedy job.

To encourage an early reopening, Caltrans offered a bonus of $200,000 for each day the work is finished ahead of the June 27 deadline, with a maximum of $5 million. For each day work goes past the deadline, the contractor would be assessed a $200,000 penalty. For C.C. Myers to collect the maximum under the contract, work would have to be completed by June 2.

“The contractors are taking into account the bonus money they can make,” Kempton said. “Obviously, the contractors are looking to get the work done very, very fast.”

Linda Clifford, chief financial officer for C.C. Myers, declined to estimate how quickly the company could rebuild the I-580 connector but said owner C.C. Myers had told an interviewer recently that it could be done in a month.

“It’s going to move pretty quickly,” she said. “Once we get going, it will be pretty evident how quickly the job will go. You wouldn’t want to blink.”

C.C. Myers has experience at completing emergency work in a hurry and collecting hefty bonuses.

After the 1994 Northridge earthquake flattened a section of the Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles, C.C. Myers rebuilt the highway in 66 days — 74 days ahead of schedule. The speedy work earned the contractor a $15.4 million bonus on top of the $14.7 million contract. To get the job done so quickly, C.C. Myers worked around-the-clock seven days a week and put as many as 400 employees in the field.

The contractor also completed the replacement of the 74-year-old Highway 128 bridge between the east and west sides of Geyserville after a storm seriously damaged it New Year’s Day 2006. C.C. Myers finished the job four months early.

The company, founded in 1977, has worked on a number of nonemergency projects in the Bay Area, such as building the Berkeley bicycle and pedestrian bridge over I-80, replacing the I-680/Highway 24 interchange in Walnut Creek, erecting twin bridges over the Napa River and replacing a deck of the approach to the 1958 span of the Carquinez Bridge.

The firm also is among those working on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. It is building the temporary double-deck bypass that will take vehicles between the end of the existing eastern span and the Yerba Buena Island tunnels for about three years while a connection between the tunnels and the new bridge is constructed.

Caltrans opened the bids for the I-580 connector project Monday morning in the basement of its Sacramento headquarters across the street from the Capitol. Bidding was by invitation only; nine firms were asked to participate based on experience with completing emergency work for Caltrans, Kempton said.

The other two lowest bidders were California Engineering Contractors Inc., at about $1.1 million, and MCM Construction Inc., at about $1.4 million. The highest of the seven bids Caltrans received was for $6.5 million.

Caltrans has spent $14.3 million so far to repair the MacArthur Maze, including $4.3 in demolition costs, $8 million for shoring up and testing ramps and $2 million for traffic management.

The maze links several vital East Bay highways and is used by more than 200,000 cars each day. Together, the connectors damaged in the tanker fire normally carry some 80,000 cars daily.

The I-880 connector will be closed intermittently during repairs of the I-580 connector, but officials said those closures will occur at night during periods of light traffic.

Caltrans officials were able to expedite the normally lengthy road repair process after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared an emergency.

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THE MAZE MELTDOWN: DAY 10

Projected completion date: June 27, 2007

TODAY

Workers will do field survey verification, measuring the gap between the two ends of the collapsed connector from Interstate 80 to I-580.

They will continue moving equipment into place. The right lane of southbound I-880 will be closed from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. Wednesday while crews remove firedamaged concrete from one of the I-580 support columns.

WHAT’S BEEN DONE

Caltrans reopened the connector from I-80 to I-880 early Monday, and agency spokesman Bob Haus said the day’s commute was “better than ever.” Later Monday, the agency awarded an $867,075 contract to C.C. Myers Inc. of Sacramento County to rebuild the connector. The contractor’s employees started work on the site Monday evening.

“Our workers and the contract workers were relentless. They were determined. I’ve never seen such dedication. . . . Some of our guys, I’m not sure if they’ve been able to eat or sleep in the past 10 days. ” — Caltrans spokesman Bob Haus

Chronicle staff writers Jason B. Johnson and Marisa Lagos contributed to this report. E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/08/MNGH0PMVIT1.DTL

Remaining development needs adventurous architecture to give it a true S.F. spark Adventurous architecture is needed as development continues to give it a true S.F. spark

John King, Chronicle Urban Design WriterTuesday, May 8, 2007

If good intentions and careful planning were enough to make a neighborhood come alive, then fast-growing Mission Bay would be a dynamic addition to San Francisco’s storied landscape.

They aren’t. And it isn’t.

 

After decades of debate and six years of construction, the 303-acre district stretching south and west from AT&T Park feels more like a planning exercise than an actual place. The strict city guidelines that are intended to prevent architectural monstrosities don’t stop one project from blurring into the next: It’s a horizontal procession of market-driven forms, utterly lacking in surprise or small touches of delight.

The good news? Most of the privately owned land south of Mission Creek hasn’t yet been developed. The challenge for the city from here on is to build on Mission Bay’s attractions — such as generous amounts of open space and affordable housing — while pushing for more adventurous architecture and urban design.

A shot of pizzazz, if you will.

The new neighborhood starts across Third Street from Willie Mays Plaza. Since the ballpark opened in 2000, eight housing developments have opened that together contain more than 1,600 units. South of Mission Creek — now lined in part by an attractive promenade — there’s a campus for UCSF that already includes three research buildings, a community center and a block of student apartments.

What’s emerging is a distinct district within the city. So far, though, it isn’t a district that will attract anyone in search of a memorable urban experience.

Instead there’s the squat monotony of King Street, where wide sidewalks and young trees are framed by vaguely modern buildings that average five stories in height except where broad slabs climb another 10 stories or so.

The cladding of choice is stucco, leavened by tiles here and there. Colors run a short gamut from brick red to drab gray. Storefronts feel like afterthoughts at the base of buildings.

Some buildings are better than others, but the overall impact is numbing. The mood is reinforced by the first batch of retailers: the likes of Safeway and Quiznos, Borders and Starbucks.

What’s ominous is that this dreary world comes after years of meticulous planning.

Today’s Mission Bay follows a blueprint approved by the city in 1998 — 17 years after Southern Pacific Railroad first floated plans for the site, most of which is 19th century landfill created to hold railroad tracks and loading yards.

Not only did early visions of corporate towers and sports arenas lead nowhere, but Southern Pacific was taken over by another railroad, the Union Pacific Corp., and spun off its land holdings as a separate company, Catellus.

The 1998 plan crafted by Catellus and the San Francisco Redevelopment Authority slices the site in half. Six thousand housing units will fill blocks on either side of the creek, while the southern portion is devoted to blocks of commercial land wrapped horseshoe-like around a 43-acre UCSF research campus.

The two zones would be separated by an east-west commons that’s 134 feet wide and five blocks long, starting at the bay and ending at a large traffic roundabout near Interstate 280.

Height limits and tower placement are dictated on a block-by-block basis. There are broad directives — “tall buildings should avoid unusual shapes which detract from the clarity of urban form” — and explicit rules that go so far as to dictate that “architectural projections” such as cornices shall have “a vertical dimension of no more than 2 feet 6 inches.”

Catellus — still the master developer despite its 2005 purchase by ProLogis Co. — is spending more than $400 million to build roads, utilities and 41 acres of parkland that include the commons and the creekside promenade.

The goal is to create a new district that feels like old San Francisco: “Similar to the Marina, though a little denser,” in the words of William Fain, whose Los Angeles design firm Johnson Fain Partners did the plan for Catellus. “People on the streets, retail at the corners, a wonderful active neighborhood right on the water.”

But this isn’t the Marina or North Beach, two revered neighborhoods assembled from hundreds of small buildings. It’s acreage that Catellus sold off in big pieces to big builders. They’ll tweak their established formats to fit Mission Bay’s rules, but then bottom-line economics kick in.

That’s why the current scene feels sterile. It’s large-scale and formulaic — development by spread sheet.

The benefit of the city’s careful planning is that the neighborhood will improve with age.

Ten years from now there should be a leafy urbanity, since the landscaping plan by Olin Partners rolls out a sharp-looking street environment while the park designs by EDAW are subdued but attractive.

As for the 6,000 housing units, 1,700 will be for low- and moderate-income residents in buildings throughout the district. This guarantees a mix of social classes and generations; already, elders from the apartments above the library can be seen sitting by the creek on sunny days.

But for Mission Bay to become a memorable part of San Francisco, it needs more than demure buildings and decorous parks. It needs landmarks — not in the sense of skyscrapers or monuments, but creative flourishes you won’t find anywhere else.

Here’s one example:

On its own, San Francisco’s Kuth/Ranieri Architects has studied how leftover bits of Mission Bay could be used to enliven the image of the district as a whole. They seized on that western traffic roundabout; it’s designed to be low and drought-tolerant — out of sight, out of mind — but Kuth/Ranieri suggests a lattice-like metal structure lifted cloud-like and airy above the circle, landscaped with vines and high-canopied trees to create a bird habitat that doesn’t block drivers’ sightlines.

Even if the aviary never takes roost, it shows flair that Mission Bay so far lacks. There’s also opportunity in an open space beneath Interstate 280. Both EDAW and Kuth/Ranieri see an ideal spot for a skateboard park; redevelopment planners are wary that it might attract vandals and trouble-makers.

Meanwhile, Mission Bay plans call for a pedestrian bridge to cross the creek at Fifth Street. That project would be an ideal subject for a civic design competition.

The redevelopment agency is taking steps of its own to jazz things up south of the creek. One smart move: Planners have fine-tuned the rules to spawn a livelier retail zone than what is along King Street. Shops and restaurants will be concentrated on three blocks of Fourth Street, with each building stepping back five feet above the second floor to focus attention on the storefronts.

Realistically, Mission Bay will never be mistaken for the Marina. The scale of construction and modern economics will see to that.

But to the extent city officials can nudge private developers to be more adventurous, they should do so. And when there’s a chance to shake up the civic landscape, do that, too. You only get one chance to build a neighborhood from scratch.

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Mission Bay timeline

1860s — Southern Pacific Railroad begins to amass tidelands along Mission Creek for rail yards and freight terminals.

1981 — Southern Pacific announces plan calling for 9,000 residential units, 2,100 hotel rooms, 10 acres of parks and 10 million square feet of commercial space. Nobody bites.

1983 — The railroad unveils another plan. This one includes canals and lagoons, 40 acres of parks, 7,000 housing units and 16 million square feet of commercial space. The design turns some heads, but this plan sinks also.

1987 — Two years after Southern Pacific agrees to fund the city’s community planning effort for Mission Bay, a company official says, “It’s starting to be a little bit real. … In 10 years, it’s going to be one of the places where people will want to hang out.”

1990 — Voters narrowly defeat a Mission Bay plan that includes 8,000 housing units, 3,000 of them affordable; 6.4 million square feet of commercial space and 52 acres of parks. Developer now is Catellus, a Southern Pacific spin-off.

1994 — Catellus teams with San Francisco Giants to propose a complex that would include a ballpark, an arena for the Golden State Warriors and “a technology-based indoor-outdoor entertainment experience.” The Warriors decline the invitation. Giants go on to better things. Catellus goes back to the drawing board.

1996 — Catellus changes direction again, saying it will concentrate on building residential buildings north of Mission Creek.

1997 — The UC Board of Regents votes to build long-discussed UCSF research campus at Mission Bay on 43 acres donated by Catellus and the city.

1998 — The San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopts a new plan for Mission Bay. Besides UC, it includes 6,000 housing units, as much as 6.8 million square feet of commercial space, a 500-room hotel and 43 acres of public parks.

1999 — Construction begins on UCSF campus.

2000 — The Giants open their ballpark at Third and King streets in April. Seven months later — and 19 years after the first prediction of a bright future — ground is broken for housing at Mission Bay.

E-mail John King at jking@sfchronicle.com.