January 2013

Short Cuts

Axis Open

Axis Café and Gallery will be sticking around the neighborhood a bit longer. Originally slated for a late December closure, according to general manager and head chef Linda Edson the shutdown has been pushed into early 2013. After a two-week holiday break, the café and gallery space at 1201 Eighth Street will re-open for breakfast, lunch and brunch on January 3. The delayed closure is apparently connected to a slower schedule than co-owners Mark and Gail Smallcombe had anticipated with the new development planned for the site. The plans call for razing the existing warehouse space to make way for two multi-story mixed-use buildings, featuring retail and offices on lower floors and living space above. Edson said the postponed changes are giving her some breathing room to work on her spin-off restaurant opening in March on Treasure Island. Meanwhile, loyal patrons have been telling Edson, “This is so great!” and are relishing the extra time and meals with their beloved eatery…Phil West, the owner of Michelin-starred restaurant Range, has formed a new corporation, Third Rail Bar, with his bar manager, Jeff Lyon, to purchase six-year-old drinks and music venue Retox in Dogpatch…La Fromagerie, a cheese and special foods shop, opened last month at the American Industrial Center (AIC)…


BAYCAT

AIC-based BAYCAT, a nonprofit that educates and employs underserved youth in digital media arts, received the National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) prestigious Art Works grant. The funds will help support BAYCAT’s Youth Powered Media Arts Program, which provides trainings in filmmaking, music production, animation, and graphic arts. BAYCAT is one of 832 nonprofit organizations nationwide to receive a NEA Art Works grant. More than 1,500 eligible applications were submitted; this is BAYCAT’s first NEA grant. “What an important recognition from the NEA,” said Villy Wang, BAYCAT’s founder and chief executive officer. “This grant will help us to fund some of the BAYCAT Academy initiatives and provide great programs to our kids.”…Late last year the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to provide the San Francisco Unified School District $2.7 million to pay for credit recovery programs – some of which will be offered at night – to help the district’s 1,900 high school juniors and seniors who aren’t on track to graduate obtain their degrees. The Board and Mayor Ed Lee haven’t reachd an agreement on how much of the monies will ultimately be released, though roughly $1.5 million seems likely. Some of the funds will be directed to Downtown and International Studies Academy.

 

Development

Rickshaw Bags’ iconic rickshaw was stolen outside its 20th Street headquarters late last year. Does that constitute identity theft?...Despite concerns from some that it was too remotely located, the electric vehicle charging station at Dogaptch-based Pat’s Garage is one of the City’s busiest…Progress Park will be named the Best Community Challenge Grant Project at the Fifth Annual Neighborhood Empowerment Network Awards, the ceremony for which will be held on January 9…In response to at least two horrific crashes in the last twelve months, the California Department of Transportation has installed new stop and directional signs at the 18th Street Overpass… Hargreaves Associates relocated to 970 Tennessee Street last month. The landscape architecture firm helped design Crissy Field and the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, and is currently working on the Mission Rock Development Open Space with the San Francisco Giants and Bayfront Parks (P23 and P24) in Dogpatch and Mission Bay…Trumark Homes is proposing to demolish two twenty-two foot buildings at 645 Texas Street and replace them with a 40-foot-tall building with 101 residential units, which would also front Mississippi and 22nd streets. City code requires that at least 40 percent of the units have two or more bedrooms, or at least 30 percent feature three or more bedrooms. While Trumark’s initial proposal included a garage with 101 parking spaces, only one off-street parking space is permitted for every two bedroom greater than 1,000 square feet, plus one off-street space for every other four units, for a maximum of 39 to 59 parking spaces for the building as designed, under the site’s Mixed Use Residential zoning. The Planning Department “strongly encourages [Trumark] to minimize the number of off-street parking spaces because of the site’s proximity to public transportation, and in conformance with the General Plan and the recently enacted Eastern Neighborhoods Area Plan.”


Correction

In last month’s “Bayview Home to Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguia” Mrs. Segovia-McGahan was incorrectly identified as teaching, rather than working, at San Francisco State Univeristy.

 Subscribe to The Potrero View

All rights reserved. Copyright © 2013 The Potrero View.

Content on this site may not be archived, retransmitted, saved in a database, or used for any commercial purpose without the express written permission of The Potrero View or its Publishers.