New Performing Arts Facility – 950 Market Street
TEDP is collaborating with American Conservatory Theater to develop the Mid-Market Center for the Performing Arts. The facility will feature new performing arts space, a conservatory, Market Street retail and restaurant uses and new housing to create a significant new mixed-use development on the pivotal block bounded by Market, Turk and Taylor Streets.
The Center will:
- Transform this key location at the intersection of the Tenderloin, the arts/theater district and Mid-Market by creating a vital hub for the performing arts and a center of civic activity.
- Create new performance facilities for A.C.T. to better serve its young artists and provide a broader variety of performance venues.
- Offer additional space for other arts organizations that will partner with A.C.T. to create a diverse and dynamic center for the arts.
- Develop ground floor retail and restaurant uses that will activate Market Street and compliment the growth of quality ground floor commercial uses along Market Street.
- Introduce new housing for students, visiting artists and local residents at the corner of Turk and Taylor which, combined with the larger development, will help stabilize and transform a troubled stretch of Turk Street.
Youth health
“Jones Street is our hallway.” Patricia Zamora, Director, Tenderloin Boys & Girls Club
Home to 4000 children, environmental conditions on the street impacting Tenderloin youth have never been studied and documented for their impact on youth health. TEDP has begun working with a coalition of youth serving organizations in an effort to secure support for a comprehensive study on our children’s health: Tenderloin Boys & Girls Club; Tenderloin Community School; Central YMCA; DeMarillac Academy; and the Vietnamese Youth Development Center.
Each day thousands of Tenderloin youth must make their way to and from their homes to neighborhood schools, recreational programs, and grocery stores. We propose tracking them on their daily commutes and studying the impacts of encountering widespread drug dealing, drug use, public drinking, urination, defecation, prostitution, and other common forms of Tenderloin public space realities on their health and development. While comprehensive studies have been done on the health impact of substandard housing, this will be the first study focusing on external environmental conditions. In recognition of the fact that our streets do indeed serve as our living rooms and hallways, this study represents an important public awareness and information initiative that we anticipate will lead to the creation of policies and investment of resources necessary to protect and improve the health of our children.
For an excellent overview of a similar public health effort read about Nadine Burke’s exemplary work at the Bayview Child Health Center.
100 Taylor Street & Mixed-Income Housing
Last fall the Urban Land Institute, San Francisco and the Tenderloin Economic Development Project co-hosted a Technical Assistance Panel that examined the 100 block of Taylor Street and offered insights for its revitalization. Among the conclusions: It would be ideal to provide owners and developers – both for-profit and non-profit – with flexibility toward achieving affordability through design. This may be accomplished through relaxing regulatory constraints and finding new financing mechanisms to support the development of high-quality low and moderate, i.e. mixed-income, housing. As it now stands, low income housing regulatory policies and financing models greatly limit what developers can do and often result in projects that are not in the best interest of low-income residents or their immediate neighborhoods.
To read the panel’s findings/recommendations please visit TAP’s Archives.
Local Arts-Based Economy Development
Stay tuned for program details on this exciting new initiative to “bundle” local restaurant, hotel and art packages to promote local commerce and patronage for local venues.