Sarasota Livin'

New Supportive Housing in San Francisco Provides Green Oasis

But that's where the new Plaza Apartments stand stocky and tall -- an eight-story cube that not only is designed to provide shelter and support for 106 once-homeless adults but to do so as a showplace of "green" design.

The Plaza, which has its formal opening March 15 now that the tenants are settled in, succeeds on both counts. In the process, it also adds a deceptively rich piece of contemporary design to a South of Market landscape where you're more likely to see someone passed out in an alleyway than pausing to survey the architecture.

The $22 million complex was developed by the city's Redevelopment Agency to create housing for extremely low-income residents and then tweaked during construction to focus on a chronically homeless population, with space inside for social workers and medical care.

Another goal was to improve the physical environment of Sixth Street, which has languished for decades. Although nonprofit developers have built needed housing in the area and the city has improved the sidewalks and even planted palm trees, there's still an air of forlorn blight.

So the Plaza has retail space for a credit union as well as theater space reserved for Bindlestiff Studio, a nonprofit Filipino American performing arts center that was in the small building that formerly occupied the site.

The final priority at the Plaza is environmental. Concepts such as recycling and energy efficiency were folded into the design work from the start. The architecture and choice of materials were shaped by a desire to attain at least a silver rating from the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. Whatever the final score, this would be the first residential building in the city to receive such certification.