Central Subway Contracts to Come to Market
Submitted August 23, 2010, 11:15 AM
Over the next two years, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency plans to release six construction contracts valued at more than $700 million in association with the Central Subway, a 1.7-mile downtown extension of the city’s light-rail system.
The $1.57 billion line, which travels beneath 4th Street, under Market Street, then beneath Stockton Street, provides a missing north-south public transit piece for the city. The route, 1.5 miles of which is underground, connects in the south to the 6.8-mile Third Street rail line. That corridor, which traverses the city’s southeast flank including Mission Bay, opened in April 2007.
“At both Moscone and Chinatown, you will have to enter a building to board the train. The development opportunity exists above the station itself,” said John Funghi, senior MTA program manager for the subway’s construction.
The agency won’t settle upon the process for seeking developer interest in the two development sites until early next year, said Lewis Ames, financial manager for the Central Subway project. What kind of development—office, residential, retail, a combination or something else—also is to be determined. Both sites will be used as staging ground for the subway’s construction and won’t be available for actual development until it is completed, Ames said. But, planning could begin much earlier. The sites themselves are expected to be delivered ready for development. The Chinatown site is now a residential structure; the Moscone site is a gas station.
Two-thirds of the cost of the Central Subway project, which is expected to open in 2018, is being financed by the federal government.
As part of the second phase, the transportation agency also is boring an underground extension from the Chinatown station to North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf, the third planned route extension. That phase is not fully planned, however, Funghi said. The planning would have to start now for construction to “dovetail” with completion of the second phase. The Central Subway project took three decades to get to the current juncture, he said.
These contracts are followed by three more to build the below-grade Chinatown station for $141 million; to build the Moscone station for $87 million; and for a final $95 million to complete such final components as track work and train-control systems.
