SAN FRANCISCO—Rincon Place, a new park that runs east-west between Main and Beale Streets in SoMa/Rincon Hill, is now complete. The new open space is situated between the Bay Area Metro Center regional agencies' headquarters and Tishman Speyer's community Lumina, and will provide local residents and office workers alike with a community gathering space. The park was introduced at a Metropolitan Transportation Commission meeting and neighborhood community event last week.

“Rincon Place adds an open green space to the growing high-rise urban landscape of SoMa,” says Carl Shannon, senior managing director at Tishman Speyer. “The new park provides an inviting neighborhood gathering space, and is a great example of a private/public partnership between our firm and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.”

Rincon Place measures about the length of a football field and is slightly more than 50 feet wide. A Ford Go-Bike bicycle share station on Beale Street was recently added adjacent to Rincon Place.

“Rincon Place is a result of a successful years-long collaboration between Tishman Speyer and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and we're extremely proud of the end result,” Natalie Martirosian, director at Tishman Speyer, tells GlobeSt.com. “The creation of this beautiful park went above and beyond the open space requirements we were given by the city, and we're very happy knowing that this space will be enjoyed by not only Lumina residents and commission employees, but by the entire neighborhood community.”

The park includes amenities such as landscaped benches, decomposed granite patios, boulder seating areas and bike racks. To bring the community together in a rapidly expanding area, Rincon Place features a small amphitheater with landscaped seating for live entertainment. Pamela Burton & Company of Santa Monica is the landscape architect for the park.

“We look forward to Rincon Place becoming a highly used and much-loved addition to the Rincon Hill neighborhood, and a welcome relief from the surrounding urban environment,” says Burton. “Just as early infrastructural moves carved into the original Rincon Hill, this new park cuts into the urban fabric to expose sedimentary layers of the city, and incorporates ancient plants like gingkoes, ferns and cycads.”

The Bay Area Metro Center is a new center for regional collaboration in the East Cut neighborhood. The renovated 1940s-era government building at 375 Beale St. opened in 2016 as the joint headquarters of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Association of Bay Area Governments/ABAG and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The eight-story 500,000-square-foot building is also home to private tenants including Twilio Inc., Degenkolb Engineers and Rutherford + Chekene, as well as the FasTrak Customer Service Center, Ada's Café and The Hub.

Lumina is located at Main and Folsom Streets, where SoMa meets the Embarcadero. It offers 656 modern residences with city and Bay views. Amenities include a bi-level club lounge, private dining room with a chef kitchen, theater and business center. The fitness center includes a climbing wall and two private exercise studios, spa facilities with a private treatment room and a 70-foot lap pool. There is also an outdoor landscaped rooftop terrace with barbecue facilities, fire pits and outdoor screening facilities.

Instant Insights /

Green Space Complements High-Rise Landscape of SoMa

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