Envy Apartment

SAN FRANCISCO — More than 60 stories above the ground, construction workers climb makeshift stairs and cross narrow steel planks to put the finishing touches on Salesforce Tower , now San Francisco ’s tallest building. The $1.1 billion skyscraper has already changed the city’s skyline, towering over old favorites like Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid. Unlike in New York and Chicago, the new 1,070-foot high-rise is a gargantuan presence in this liberal West Coast city . Salesforce Tower and a massive adjoining transit center also embody a larger transition in San Francisco — one that pits the technology industry against the city’s charming neighborhoods. Tech giant Salesforce .com, which provides online software for business, bought the naming rights to the 61-story steel and concrete building, adding to concerns that the tech economy is steamrolling through the city. “All the tech and people the industry is bringing in, you can work two jobs and barely make a living for yo...

September 11, 2010 at 12:00 pm news By Kevin Plummer Every Saturday at noon, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today. One Sunday evening in 1959, after a screening of the Toronto Film Society , architect Gerald Robinson and engineer/builder Irwin Burns chatted over coffee. The two shared a common viewpoint that the city’s urban core was in decline. The same was happening in cities across Canada as municipal governments were more interested in improving traffic and encouraging sprawl rather than revitalizing their downtown districts. The very next day, Burns heard from real estate developer Murray Webber that a lot with Bloor Street West frontage was going to become available for a hundred-year lease from Victoria University. “There,” Burns told Robinson , as he recalled in the Globe and Mail of October 18, 1963, “is the place to demonstra...