The smoke stack is part of the San Francisco skyline in Dog Patch. Dog Patch (and locals never use the word The before Dog Patch) took on different industries, a cow pasture, shipyard, even a sugarcane refinery and several power stations. There was much going on here and you still see old buildings but may not know much about the past until you find someone who can give you a tour and throw in some historical knowledge. I’ve been here for various events in the parking lot.
This tour I took is open to the public once a month and hosted by the company who has since purchased the land for development. Their first step is cleaning up the water, as many of the industries dumped their waste into the water. This is a long and tedious process to clean up a century of harm to the environment.
They have rough ideas for future plans of the area which includes a hotel, office buildings, apartments, lots of open park space, and retail shops and restaurants. This idea also means they’re having public meetings with the city for comment. Their expected development would take about 20 years. In a city like San Francisco, you’ll have to cut through a lot of red tape and dealing with those who would oppose the plan.
So we get started with a bit of history. This old beautiful brick building was the original power plant built to support a sugar refinery. Part of the roof is gone which makes the structure unsafe and we could only take photos from a distance. The project team hopes they can figure a way to keep some parts of the building as a possible art wall installation, but much of that depends on the funding and finding a method to preserve it.
Then we head towards the PG&E plant. The smoke stack actually lets out steam and not smoke. We got to peak inside and there wasn’t much to see since you can’t see all the way through to the sky.
The they took us through the ground floor and up to the top of the building which gives you a 180 view to the east facing Oakland’s waterfront. I’m a bit afraid of heights with a grate flooring so I didn’t walk all the way out. I think IF I had brought my 360 camera and would have gone out just to get that photo.
This project is going to bring lots of changes to the waterfront. Though 20 years is a long time to wait. You can see more of this in my Bulletin By Google link: Google Bulletin Link
October 2017
Thank you!