Context

Pier 70 is a place of incredible history and an exciting future. Once a hub of industry with over 18,000 workers on-site on any given day, today Pier 70 is mostly filled with vacant buildings and storage. There is one bright exception – the Noonan Building for more than 40 years has hosted an incredible collective of artists and creative thinkers. In the future, Pier 70 will be home to housing, space for artists and makers, restaurants and acres of waterfront parks and open space.

Located on the Central Waterfront

Pier 70 is located on San Francisco’s Central Waterfront, between Mission Bay
to the north and Hunter’s Point Shipyard to the south.

At the Foot of Potrero Hill and Dogpatch

Starting at 22nd Street and Tennessee (in the heart of Dogpatch), walk east across Third Street. Notice how the neighborhood fabric at once becomes distinctly industrial. You can see the roofline of Building 2 and Building 12 at the horizon. Pier 70 is not just adjacent to Dogpatch – future designs for the site have drawn from the neighborhood’s character, texture and arts-focused uses to ensure that this place becomes an extension of the neighborhood. 

When work began on the Pier 70 project, we started not with engineering or architecture, but with art. We commissioned local artist Wendy McNaughton to create a piece capturing the spirit of Dogpatch and Pier 70. The result – “The Pier 70 Community in its own Words” – is a focused study on what makes this neighborhood tick. It was the perfect way to begin to understand what makes this place so special, and how a future development might best weave into the existing neighborhood fabric.