PROJECTS
55 Laguna Street Section 106
LOCATION: San Francisco, California
CLIENT: ESA and the Mayor's Office of Housing
DATE COMPLETED: April 2012
55 Laguna Street is the former San Francisco State Teachers' College campus, two entire city blocks in San Francisco's Hayes Valley neighborhood. After San Francisco State pulled out in 1957, the campus became an extension for UC Berkeley, until this campus closed in 2002. The abandoned and badly deteriorated college campus, which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, contains four historic Spanish Colonial Revival/Art Deco classroom/administration buildings and a gymnasium constructed between 1924 and 1935. The buildings share a cohesive styling characteristic of their era, as well as containing several New Deal-era murals. The former campus is surrounded by Hayes Valley, a residential neighborhood consisting of intact Victorian-era houses and flats, as well as several large Art Deco and Spanish Colonial Revival style apartment buildings.
UC Berkeley has been working for almost a decade to redevelop the 55 Laguna site. In early 2012, VerPlanck Historic Preservation Consulting contracted with ESA (the lead consultant) to complete a Historic Property Survey Report (HPSR) for the Area of Potential Effect (APE), which comprised the former campus as well as 51 individual properties surrounding the campus.
VerPlanck ensured that Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) 523 Forms were completed for every building, structure, and landscape feature in the APE, including several previously unidentified properties. VerPlanck analyzed the impacts of the proposed project, which entailed the preservation of three of the five National Register-eligible buildings, and the construction of 440 new dwelling units in several new low and mid-rise buildings, on the National Register-listed campus and on the surrounding neighborhood, much of which is located within the Hayes Valley Residential Historic District.
