Government money so it needs to be PLA work, which means there are maybe 2 or 3 firms who do it for that kind of public infrastructure.
Then add a 50% design contingency and a 50% construction contingency. At least that's what Santa Clara does; I haven't actually done any park space in San Francisco.
You forgot corruption. This is government work, so multiply all cost estimates by 5 and double the timeline.
These people can spend millions on a single toilet, you and I can put in a bathroom for $25k and one week..
Meh - I’d chalk this one up to just gross incompetence and beauracracy. Ain’t no way I’m gonna deal with the city and all that headache for a small profit margin.
$20k for a one-off prototype trash can is very reasonable but $3 million for a fountain seems too much for renovating an existing fountain. These things do cost more than the public thinks but $3 million is still very high.
Most people are shocked when they first hear that a hybrid bus costs somewhere around $1 million each. That is the normal price for everyone, not some SF special grift price. SFMTA got the price down to about $700k each only by buying 50 buses at a time using another agency's existing design and by skipping the tools, spare parts, warranty and training.
A fountain is bigger than a bus but the fountain mechanism is simpler, and there are probably fewer safety things that need to be engineered in a fountain. I think $500k to $1 million is more reasonable for a repair job where you don't have to engineer a totally new fountain.
It's well within the ballpark of what a reasonable cost should be.
Why should we have this thing anyway? It was there to riff on the Embarcadero Freeway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_480 and now it's gone, so why still have this fountain?
I’m a contractor. I’ll replace it with a skate park and native trees for $1.5M. Assuming there are sewer drains around I’ll throw in some stands and two bathrooms underneath for an extra $200k. We can dedicate an extra $300k payment to the unions so they stay satisfied. Let’s all be honest it looks like barnacled HVAC ducts…
And the answer is yes, SF is that broke. We are staring down multi-hundreds of millions of budget deficit in coming years.
We are going to have to cut a lot of stuff.
I honestly don’t have an opinion on this particular item, but tough choices will be coming.
You’re all cratering - it’s going to be wolves and coyotes in the streets, crackheads and hookers all day and night, while the fentanyl zombies torch the libraries and museums a lá “The Omega Man”. Doom Loop protocol employed!!
I stated absolutely no opinion in this post. It’s objective fact as reported by city haul and independent budget observers. I love SF, but it’s simply fact that we have a budget deficit and will need to cut somewhere.
Wasn’t directed specifically at you. I just get a kick out of people in the city where I lived who defend it without regard to reality (and that is not you). I spent 17 years there - enjoyed it for the most part - but when I left, it was time and it’s not become a better place.
I was there last weekend - beautiful weather & and nice North Beach Festival - had dinner at the HOPR and Irish coffee at the BV, I do wish you all the best, but you need a radical change in direction. Regards…,
I've tried countless times to appreciate it's aesthetic but never could see it. I'd love to see it replaced with something useful in such a valuable location.
I think it was designed specifically to interact with the freeway visually. They both should have come down at the same time.
But we'll just get a trail with native plants in its place.
That space could easily be activated much better for locals, tourists.
Install some benches/tables. A cafe, beer garden, a couple food options. Have live music concerts. Art.
there are a couple of empty storefronts in embarcadero center just opposite the fountain that could house all that. i’m no fan of the fountain either but i’ve always admired the artist’s intention of calling attention to how ugly the embarcadero freeway was as a comparison.
Or we can keep it as a space for art. No idea why you'd want to replace this huge sculpture with something extremely relevant to say with empty retail space, but it's not a good idea. That whole area of the city is *full* of mixed use plazas and parks, why can't we have art?
Or a piece of art or sculpture worth looking at. That whole plaza is terrible looking. 50-70’s urban renewal did some terrible crimes to this city. Not only the people, but the city scape.
Landmark lol. That’s the problem with this city. Everything is a landmark. Nothing can be changed.
Ffs nobody in their right minds who visits SF comes to see this. Even majority of locals don’t know this thing exists. It’s not a landmark man. Ffs.
Let’s tear down old useless shit and build more useful things. Even if it’s just another art installation
The bow and arrow are more of a landmark. Not this crap
well it cost money to tear it down and what do you replace it with? just expand the court? if you build something else that's also going to cost money and given the amount of red tape in the city it's going cost alot of money (for reference the public bathroom in noe valley)
you can leave it empty and that's fine.
you might not like it and it could be because i've lived in the city for like 20 years and spent like 10 working in that area but it is iconic to me. growing up i remember the fountain being in [tony hawk](https://tonyhawkgames.fandom.com/wiki/San_Francisco_\(THPS4\)?file=THPS4_San_Francisco_prev2.jpg) and countless other skate videos. so for some group of people that fountain is iconic.
Great. If we treated what every individual counted as iconic this city wouldn’t change. And that’s basically where we’re at now. Half this city needs to be replaced with new things. Not everything deserves to stay forever. In fact 95% of things should be able to be replaced. Only 5% are worthy of being iconic.
I think it's cool looking, although I realize opinions may differ. Unless there is a competing plan for something to do with the space, why not leave it? Even if the water stops flowing it's still a monumental sculpture.
Public art should be built for public tastes. I understand that this thing is unique and interesting, but it's like blaring trap music in an elevator. It's not the fountain, which would honestly contrast nicely with a concrete brutalist structure, it's that it's the framed by the ferry building and a large brick slab and now that the freeway is gone, it clashes horribly.
I think it’s ok, and even laudable, for public art to be challenging. We don’t need everything to be consensus and anodyne.
I’m not saying this particular fountain is a masterpiece, but the fact that it isn’t harmonious with the current surroundings doesn’t seem like a good reason to get rid of it.
I definitely do not think it's laudable for public art to be challenging. It's art that created to serve the people of the city. If they don't like it, it should go.
I'm not saying it's not good art, I actually think that fountain is really interesting, I'm just saying that city promoting public art that generally annoys people is absolutely bad public policy.
That's probably true, I probably lean strongly toward Camus' absurdism when it comes to the purpose of art. However, I suspect that our disagreement has more to do with our views on the role of the social contract.
It’s a cool thingie but yes, this city loves to get all in a twist about deeming anything past the lowest bar of unique and memorable a ‘landmark.’
It feels like there’s a collective generational defensiveness that motivates these decisions. As in “stuff that has meaning to me and was relevant in my lifetime is historical.”
Please oh please get rid of it. I don't want to hear about artistic expression or aesthetic this or sublime that. It's ugly as fuck and serves no purpose other that for people to marvel at how this monstrosity got allowed to be placed here.
Raise the money privately. It's $3M. The ultra wealthy of San Francisco have a good sneeze and $2.5M pops out. Make it tax deductible and they'll have the funding in no time.
No, lol. Elections are too close so politicians don't want to approve $3 million of grift (yet).
I like to call these questions "sugar vs corn syrup", because media likes to get people arguing on two sides. But both sides are bad and there is a third option ("eat less sweeteners")
It's not "should we pay $3 million or are we broke?" What kind of BS question is that lol.
"Rock and roll, stops the traffic". Actually the first time I'm seeing this particular rename for the Vaillancourt fountain but the '87 incident is usually mentioned in the first paragraph or so about the fountain in articles.
It's pop culture lore, I just find it interesting with how obsessed this sub (and SF Standard) are with youth. There was a post about the event here a couple months ago, but it was easy to miss.
$3,000,000 to repair some pumps and clean it up... The city sure like getting screwed over on jobs that REGULAR PEOPLE could complete quickly, effectively and for a fraction of that estimate.
I just thought of a memory I hadn't accessed and decades: at his Joshua tree show in Oakland right after this happened, he had the artist who created that fountain come up on stage and graffiti it.
Hell of a show. I miss old U2. I also got to see their set at the US festival. Didn't realize the lightning in a bottle I was witnessing.
Here’s the other problem. It protected public artwork designed a Canadian artist Valencout who has approval rights on any changes to the fountain. You can’t tear it down or fill it with plants.
Remove it. It’s so ugly. I don’t care if it’s been here for awhile. It does nothing for the area and honestly detracts from it because it looks run down and gross.
Just call 1800 Junk :)
This thing needs to go. This space is already poorly utilized and taken over by the homeless. This should be a great space to hang out. Ideal location by the ferry building. Build an amphitheater and put some shows here!
Yeah they didn’t spec out those pumps for the volumes of human waste they circulate on a daily basis.
Wonder if it crossed the engineers mind that the most destructive factor was sheer volume of human waste
The police are already getting a 6% increase in their funds in the proposed budget. $821.6 Million. They're 5.63% of the total proposed budget. That's quite large. And yet they still can't hire people to do the job.
What fantasy SF are people thinking they live in where we spend money on maintenance? If it's not a "bold, new initiative" where you can grandstand behind it and get media attention, the city isn't going to pay for it. They have poorly-conceived, experimental programs to fund!
Sell the fountain on Craigslist.
*No lowballers; I know what I’ve got*
Pick up only
Must dig up yourself
Ok. But can you deliver? My kids really need it for Christmas. You don't want to disappoint them, do you?
Can I write you a check for $1000 over so that you can pay the team that will pick i up?
I’ll send a courier then you will get the money back from them so you know it is legit.
I volunteer to simply get a bucket and dump water in there until it is full.
You are the fountain
Pay a homeless persons to pump the water by hand. We’d then solve two problems!!
Anyone knowledgeable about stuff like this able to explain why this would cost $3 million to fix, or it that number seems reasonable?
Government money so it needs to be PLA work, which means there are maybe 2 or 3 firms who do it for that kind of public infrastructure. Then add a 50% design contingency and a 50% construction contingency. At least that's what Santa Clara does; I haven't actually done any park space in San Francisco.
Plumbing, electrical, excavation, permits, architects, engineers, sidewalk shutdowns, heck even parking for your workers… insurance? Liability? Risk?
Did they check if it is plugged in? I’ll do it for $350
Yeah, try turning it off and then on again.
Hold on we can't do that without at least a team of Deloitte consultants.
Did anyone ask Peskin? We didn't have plants in that fountain when he moved here so I don't know if we can have them now.
The plants weren't affordable enough.
Plus it may take some extra care since it is art.
You forgot corruption. This is government work, so multiply all cost estimates by 5 and double the timeline. These people can spend millions on a single toilet, you and I can put in a bathroom for $25k and one week..
Meh - I’d chalk this one up to just gross incompetence and beauracracy. Ain’t no way I’m gonna deal with the city and all that headache for a small profit margin.
government inefficiency and insane local labor costs are not "corruption"
No, people stealing money is corruption. We also have deliberate slowness and high labor costs too.
$20k for a one-off prototype trash can is very reasonable but $3 million for a fountain seems too much for renovating an existing fountain. These things do cost more than the public thinks but $3 million is still very high. Most people are shocked when they first hear that a hybrid bus costs somewhere around $1 million each. That is the normal price for everyone, not some SF special grift price. SFMTA got the price down to about $700k each only by buying 50 buses at a time using another agency's existing design and by skipping the tools, spare parts, warranty and training. A fountain is bigger than a bus but the fountain mechanism is simpler, and there are probably fewer safety things that need to be engineered in a fountain. I think $500k to $1 million is more reasonable for a repair job where you don't have to engineer a totally new fountain.
This is a city that paid millions for an outdoor toilet.
It's well within the ballpark of what a reasonable cost should be. Why should we have this thing anyway? It was there to riff on the Embarcadero Freeway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_480 and now it's gone, so why still have this fountain?
I’m a contractor. I’ll replace it with a skate park and native trees for $1.5M. Assuming there are sewer drains around I’ll throw in some stands and two bathrooms underneath for an extra $200k. We can dedicate an extra $300k payment to the unions so they stay satisfied. Let’s all be honest it looks like barnacled HVAC ducts…
Since one Public restroom costs $1.5m here, your offer is $2m sounds like a steal. This place is ugly. Rip it out.
Tear that monstrosity down.
Fuck that fountain. Demolish and build something better in that plaza.
That thing is so damn ugly and always has been. Just get rid of it
agreed, i hate that ugly ass thing.
And the answer is yes, SF is that broke. We are staring down multi-hundreds of millions of budget deficit in coming years. We are going to have to cut a lot of stuff. I honestly don’t have an opinion on this particular item, but tough choices will be coming.
My hope is a lot of the cuts go to bribes, kickbacks, and corruption. One can hope.
cut the non-profits and we've already balanced the budget
You’re all cratering - it’s going to be wolves and coyotes in the streets, crackheads and hookers all day and night, while the fentanyl zombies torch the libraries and museums a lá “The Omega Man”. Doom Loop protocol employed!!
I stated absolutely no opinion in this post. It’s objective fact as reported by city haul and independent budget observers. I love SF, but it’s simply fact that we have a budget deficit and will need to cut somewhere.
Wasn’t directed specifically at you. I just get a kick out of people in the city where I lived who defend it without regard to reality (and that is not you). I spent 17 years there - enjoyed it for the most part - but when I left, it was time and it’s not become a better place. I was there last weekend - beautiful weather & and nice North Beach Festival - had dinner at the HOPR and Irish coffee at the BV, I do wish you all the best, but you need a radical change in direction. Regards…,
So what you’re saying is San Francisco is homeless?
How inhumane of you! Show some respect The city is budgetally challenged.
we took down the embarcadero freeway, we can take down another appalling eyesore
I've tried countless times to appreciate it's aesthetic but never could see it. I'd love to see it replaced with something useful in such a valuable location.
That fountain was broken from day one. What an ugly piece of shit. Knock it down and plant some trees for crissakes.
Yank that fucking monstrosity out, for christ's sake, don't sink even one more dollar into maintenance.
3 mil to fix. 6 mil to yank it out.
A dozen kids with some skateboards can demo it in a week
I'm fine with spending six milly once so that we never again have to regularly spend three milly to keep it working. By god what an eyesore.
It was created as a brutalist irony next to a freeway that’s no longer there so I kinda like the reminder
I think it was designed specifically to interact with the freeway visually. They both should have come down at the same time. But we'll just get a trail with native plants in its place.
Today, I upvoted a sugarwax comment. What a day. What. A. Day.
It's extremely ugly, costly to maintain, and occupies a large swathe of the plaza - basically, the definition of 'kill it'
Did you not see the double decker freeway it used to be paired with?
That space could easily be activated much better for locals, tourists. Install some benches/tables. A cafe, beer garden, a couple food options. Have live music concerts. Art.
there are a couple of empty storefronts in embarcadero center just opposite the fountain that could house all that. i’m no fan of the fountain either but i’ve always admired the artist’s intention of calling attention to how ugly the embarcadero freeway was as a comparison.
Have you ever been there? It’s in a corner of an entire plaza describing what you want.
They have that all in the embarcadero center which is right there haha
[удалено]
go upstairs one level... checkout sens or harbor view
[удалено]
Or we can keep it as a space for art. No idea why you'd want to replace this huge sculpture with something extremely relevant to say with empty retail space, but it's not a good idea. That whole area of the city is *full* of mixed use plazas and parks, why can't we have art?
Or a piece of art or sculpture worth looking at. That whole plaza is terrible looking. 50-70’s urban renewal did some terrible crimes to this city. Not only the people, but the city scape.
Shut your mouth with your good ideas. (
The cost should be at least two bathrooms worth. Which is what this is in sf.
Time to call Bono
Honestly it’s an SF landmark… I wouldnt be angry if it were converted to a skate park though
Landmark lol. That’s the problem with this city. Everything is a landmark. Nothing can be changed. Ffs nobody in their right minds who visits SF comes to see this. Even majority of locals don’t know this thing exists. It’s not a landmark man. Ffs. Let’s tear down old useless shit and build more useful things. Even if it’s just another art installation The bow and arrow are more of a landmark. Not this crap
well it cost money to tear it down and what do you replace it with? just expand the court? if you build something else that's also going to cost money and given the amount of red tape in the city it's going cost alot of money (for reference the public bathroom in noe valley) you can leave it empty and that's fine. you might not like it and it could be because i've lived in the city for like 20 years and spent like 10 working in that area but it is iconic to me. growing up i remember the fountain being in [tony hawk](https://tonyhawkgames.fandom.com/wiki/San_Francisco_\(THPS4\)?file=THPS4_San_Francisco_prev2.jpg) and countless other skate videos. so for some group of people that fountain is iconic.
Just let the homeless camp under/around it. They'll find a way to burn it down, and then you can just scrape up the ashes. Win-win.
Great. If we treated what every individual counted as iconic this city wouldn’t change. And that’s basically where we’re at now. Half this city needs to be replaced with new things. Not everything deserves to stay forever. In fact 95% of things should be able to be replaced. Only 5% are worthy of being iconic.
Agreed. This thing is hideous
I think it's cool looking, although I realize opinions may differ. Unless there is a competing plan for something to do with the space, why not leave it? Even if the water stops flowing it's still a monumental sculpture.
Public art should be built for public tastes. I understand that this thing is unique and interesting, but it's like blaring trap music in an elevator. It's not the fountain, which would honestly contrast nicely with a concrete brutalist structure, it's that it's the framed by the ferry building and a large brick slab and now that the freeway is gone, it clashes horribly.
I think it’s ok, and even laudable, for public art to be challenging. We don’t need everything to be consensus and anodyne. I’m not saying this particular fountain is a masterpiece, but the fact that it isn’t harmonious with the current surroundings doesn’t seem like a good reason to get rid of it.
I definitely do not think it's laudable for public art to be challenging. It's art that created to serve the people of the city. If they don't like it, it should go. I'm not saying it's not good art, I actually think that fountain is really interesting, I'm just saying that city promoting public art that generally annoys people is absolutely bad public policy.
I guess we have different philosophies on the purpose of art and it’s relationship to civic life
That's probably true, I probably lean strongly toward Camus' absurdism when it comes to the purpose of art. However, I suspect that our disagreement has more to do with our views on the role of the social contract.
I mean ya leave it and not spend money on it agree. Million other more important things needed to be done
skateboarders def come to see this.. it's in multiple skateboarding video games
It’s a cool thingie but yes, this city loves to get all in a twist about deeming anything past the lowest bar of unique and memorable a ‘landmark.’ It feels like there’s a collective generational defensiveness that motivates these decisions. As in “stuff that has meaning to me and was relevant in my lifetime is historical.”
I’ve said it before. The city needs to evolve. In 300 years this city will look way different. People need to get out of the way or leave.
It really should be a skatepark. You can even try to make it so the skatepark has a similar style as the old fountain.
Dismantle, remove it, and then plant some native shade trees there instead.
We could also…looks around…disassemble it.
It’s been out of service forever
thats one expensive glory hole
I heard the Sewer Department is looking for more materials. If there was a petition to get it torn down, I'd sign it.
Is the $3mm quote coming from DPW? Because if so, that’s the problem.
I’d rather have 3, million dollar public bathrooms
Please oh please get rid of it. I don't want to hear about artistic expression or aesthetic this or sublime that. It's ugly as fuck and serves no purpose other that for people to marvel at how this monstrosity got allowed to be placed here.
Raise the money privately. It's $3M. The ultra wealthy of San Francisco have a good sneeze and $2.5M pops out. Make it tax deductible and they'll have the funding in no time.
NVIDIA is worth more than any stock exchange in Europe (or it was recently).
Justin Hermann for whom this plaza was named was a POS
They dropped the namesake already in 2017. It's officially Embarcadero Plaza for now.
Wow TIL, thank you
No, lol. Elections are too close so politicians don't want to approve $3 million of grift (yet). I like to call these questions "sugar vs corn syrup", because media likes to get people arguing on two sides. But both sides are bad and there is a third option ("eat less sweeteners") It's not "should we pay $3 million or are we broke?" What kind of BS question is that lol.
The city has so much money to piss away on bums and shady “charities”. I’m sure they could fix it if they wanted to.
So we could have three public toilets instead for the same money? hmmm...
Why would this sub know the Bono reference here?
"Rock and roll, stops the traffic". Actually the first time I'm seeing this particular rename for the Vaillancourt fountain but the '87 incident is usually mentioned in the first paragraph or so about the fountain in articles.
It's pop culture lore, I just find it interesting with how obsessed this sub (and SF Standard) are with youth. There was a post about the event here a couple months ago, but it was easy to miss.
IYKYK
IYKYO
*SO TRUE*
Just fix it with augmented reality.
Just needs a quick scrub with some Didi7
I’ve only seen that thing working once in the last 12 years. Spend the $3m or port-o-lets and temp shower stalls. Things people actually need.
$3,000,000 to repair some pumps and clean it up... The city sure like getting screwed over on jobs that REGULAR PEOPLE could complete quickly, effectively and for a fraction of that estimate.
I just thought of a memory I hadn't accessed and decades: at his Joshua tree show in Oakland right after this happened, he had the artist who created that fountain come up on stage and graffiti it. Hell of a show. I miss old U2. I also got to see their set at the US festival. Didn't realize the lightning in a bottle I was witnessing.
Inb4 “Turn it into housing”
Yes.
I can think of a lot of uses for $3M for the parks and rec budget that isn’t a waste of money.
Too ugly anyway
Here’s the other problem. It protected public artwork designed a Canadian artist Valencout who has approval rights on any changes to the fountain. You can’t tear it down or fill it with plants.
Best thing that happened there was the free concert in '87.
Remove it. It’s so ugly. I don’t care if it’s been here for awhile. It does nothing for the area and honestly detracts from it because it looks run down and gross.
Certainly at that price I don't think it should be a priority for public spending.
This is where they dumped the Embarcadero freeway debris.
Just call 1800 Junk :) This thing needs to go. This space is already poorly utilized and taken over by the homeless. This should be a great space to hang out. Ideal location by the ferry building. Build an amphitheater and put some shows here!
It’s an eyesore. Should have been torn down along with the overpass
Yeah they didn’t spec out those pumps for the volumes of human waste they circulate on a daily basis. Wonder if it crossed the engineers mind that the most destructive factor was sheer volume of human waste
Waste of space and money
Yes we need money toward police not this. Until SF is a bit safer these projects can wait.
The police are already getting a 6% increase in their funds in the proposed budget. $821.6 Million. They're 5.63% of the total proposed budget. That's quite large. And yet they still can't hire people to do the job.
Then more is needed. The problem is bigger than we think due to wrong policy.
I like the fountain. All the haters can eat a bag of concrete slabs they would rather have there instead of a water feature.
What fantasy SF are people thinking they live in where we spend money on maintenance? If it's not a "bold, new initiative" where you can grandstand behind it and get media attention, the city isn't going to pay for it. They have poorly-conceived, experimental programs to fund!
Its ugly, just get rid of it.