Thousands of visitors jammed the new Transbay Transit Center for its grand opening party Saturday, tapping their toes to live music while waiting to hop on crammed escalators that carried them to the bustling bus deck and sprawling 5.4-acre rooftop park. Lines stretched the length of the Grand Hall as people tried to get into the $2.2 billion multistory transportation hub. Visitors climbed onto vintage buses parked on the bus desk as part of the Historic and Contemporary Bus Expo, adults sipped alcoholic beverages and played Foosball in the Main Plaza, and children rolled down soft hills of grass overlooking chaotic San Francisco streets and hustling pedestrians. “I never expected this center to finish or to be this good,” said Elias Berhanu of San Francisco. “I remember before construction even started, when we had the old Transbay Terminal, which you didn’t even feel comfortable standing in.” The new center, which stretches roughly three city blocks from Beale Street to Second Street south of Mission Street, towers in comparison to its predecessor. The Transbay Terminal was built in 1939 at First and Mission streets. Near the end of World War II, roughly 26 million passengers passed through the terminal each year. In 1958, the terminal was converted to a bus-only center and ridership dropped. It was demolished in 2010. Donna Williams of San Francisco said she’s relieved that the new center is now open to the public after years of construction. She lives on Beale Street and calls herself a neighbor to the soon-to-be bustling station, which will begin service this week for buses traveling to and from the East Bay. Muni buses are already using the center, and high-speed rail service between the Central Valley and San Francisco is scheduled to arrive in 2029. “We have the Embarcadero on the other side of Market, but I’m happy to have this,” Williams said. “Construction has been a nightmare down here. With all the streets blocked off, buses couldn’t get through and pedestrians couldn’t get through, either.” Williams, a librarian for the California Judicial Center Library, said she’s excited about being able to grab a book from Salesforce Park’s Reading Room, which provides stands of books scattered throughout the rooftop park that may be borrowed by visitors. Visitors took selfies in front of agave plants that are native to Mexico and Southern California, bent over railings to snap photos of Chilean flowers and walked through a forest of bamboo surrounding an oval skylight, looking into the Grand Hall, where other visitors waited for the escalator to the roof. Officials were forced to manage the packed crowd in the Grand Hall by limiting access to the rooftop park for a period of time Saturday afternoon, said Christine Falvey, a spokeswoman for the Transbay Joint Powers Authority. “We did have capacity issues and crowding, with long waits to get into the park,” Falvey said. “But we opened an hour early and ended the event at 4 p.m., as planned.” Salesforce purchased naming rights to the transit center and its park as part of a 25-year, $110 million sponsorship agreement. Candace Collette, 62, thumbed through books after taking a stroll through the park’s eight gardens, each with flora from different continents. “This is my neighborhood, and I want to be a part of my city,” Collette said. She also lives on Beale Street and said she hopes the new transit center will relieve the traffic tie-ups she can see from her balcony. The new bus bridge connects the transit center to the Bay Bridge, which officials hope will reduce traffic congestion. Berhanu, 49, brought his two daughters, 7 and 10, to explore the center on opening day. Both girls carried swag bags brimming with transportation goodies while they played on the sprawling grass of the green roof. The West Grand Brass Band played a jazzy rendition of Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” while children hung from playground safety netting and plunged their fingers into boxes full of markers and colored pencils in an arts and crafts area of the roof. “It’s contained, so it feels safe enough, away from the cars and the streets below,” said Michelle Gapuz, who brought her two children to the opening, along with friends. “This is something that San Francisco desperately needed.” Her 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son pressed stars onto construction paper and used markers to color wildlife scenes. Park officials are expected to schedule year-round free events and activities, including do-it-yourself arts and crafts, musical performances, dance parties and fitness classes. A gondola, which is expected to carry visitors three floors from the entry plaza on Mission Street to the rooftop garden, was not completed in time for the grand opening. It is scheduled to be up and running by Sept. 24. Lauren Hernández is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor<doc-sep>Update: After cracks were discovered on steel beams inside the structure shortly after opening, the Transit Center and Salesforce Park have been closed until further notice. After 20 years of planning, nearly a decade of construction, and one multimillion dollar rebranding, the Transbay Transit Center—and its sprawling 5.4-acre rooftop park—will open to the public Saturday. Stretching nearly three blocks between Beale and Second streets in the newfangled East Cut neighborhood, the $2.26 billion sleeping giant is the city’s newest icon. Designed by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, the Transit Center gives you a feeling that something special is about to happen, like a party where every San Franciscan is welcome. The excitement and anticipation is something that Salesforce Tower and the new SFMOMA expansion failed to deliver, despite their highly hyped designs—at face value, a bulging appendage and a glacier, respectively. “It’s a miracle,” said architect Fred Clarke about the new hub. “Is that the appropriate word?” While a handful of naysayers wrung their hands over the gleaming behemoth (decrying it as everything from a glorified bus stop to a waste of money), they missed the mark: the Transit Center, which serves as both a daily transit depot and a destination spot, is meant for denizens to use, not only to be looked at in awe from a distance. Bounded by newly sprouted high rises such as Park Tower and 181 Fremont, the Transit Center finds itself inadvertently surrounded by some of the big names in tech—Slack and iShares, for example—who are proudly, and perhaps a touch desperately, flaunting branding in windows with a full view of the recreational rooftop. Spanning more than three blocks, the Transit Center is a nurturing presence. Its lush lawns and single-person benches beckon stressed-out worker drones to hang out for a while, walk barefoot in the grass, grab a bite, and chill. Design The entire shebang measures approximately 1.2 million square feet and spreads out across six levels—four levels above ground and two below. The ground level will service several Muni bus lines; the bus deck level on the second floor will host regional bus service extending beyond the city, and the show-stopping park level is found on the top floor. The below-ground concourse level and train platform level, neither of which are completed, will be for retail and the impending Caltrain service (by 2028) and—fingers crossed—the California High-Speed Rail. The most striking aspect about the project, next to its curb appeal and its rooftop park, is the natural light and long views inside the grand hall. There’s nothing cloistered about this new space. Three skylights, which punctuate at park level, draw daytime light into the core of the building. Lighting will be completely shut off in most of the Transit Center during off-peak hours. “Inspiration came from nature,” said Fred Clarke, senior principal at Pelli Clarke Pelli, “and all of the culture, from art to mathematics, found in the Bay Area.” The curtain wall A whopping 3,992 perforated white aluminum panels, which feature a geometrical pattern, make up the exterior. It measures 3,000 feet long at 44 feet tall. “It’s a rather pleasant design, isn’t it?” said mathematician and physicist Sir Roger Penrose at a pre-opening symposium discussing his work, underselling his revelatory geometrical rhombus pattern he discovered in the 1970s. The mini bridge Not only here to provide form, this mini eastern span Bay Bridge replica, which boasts a pylon with support cables that can be seen from Howard Street, functions as the access point for buses heading into and returning from the East Bay. Art From the terrazzo floor featuring flora and butterflies in earthy hues to scrolling all-caps messages illuminated on the second floor, the Transit Center has lassoed esteemed artists who have put their thumbprints inside the behemoth. Secret Garden by Julie Chang, which spans nearly 20,000 square feet, can be found on the Grand Hall’s floors. Her illustrations of California poppies, jewel-toned hummingbirds, and butterfly cutouts will find their way into many Instagram accounts over the next few years. Jenny Holzer’s White Light, which can be seen from the Fremont Street entrance, features scrolling LED text that wraps around the elliptical glass enclosure of the Grand Hall. Her text messages, such as “Protect me from what I want” and “Abuse of power comes as no surprise,” were composed using text from historical archives from authors who wrote about the Bay Area, as well as documents and records on the construction of the Bay Bridge and the original Timothy Pflueger-designed Transbay Terminal. : Jenny Holzer’s “White Light” inside the new Salesforce Transit Center. pic.twitter.com/8KeAoTO3t9 — Brock Keeling (@BrockKeeling) August 4, 2018 Found in Shaw Alley, Parallel Light Fields by James Carpenter consists a series of illuminated benches that interact with natural light from above. Bus Fountain by Ned Kahn: The 1000-foot-long is a series of water jets that curve along most of the north side of the park, are triggered by sensors that clock the movement of the buses on the level below. Can I ride the gondola? No, not until it’s completed in September. The Salesforce-sponsored aerial tram, found at Mission and Fremont Streets, will be in operation later this year. It can hold 20 passengers, but won’t be as effective for reaching the rooftop park compared to the 10 access points located throughout the transit center. What transit services are offered? The first floor offers Muni bus service via the 5-Fulton, 5-Fulton Rapid, 7-Haight-Noriega, 38-Geary, and 38R-Geary Rapid. The third floor hosts the 25-Treasure Island, AC Transit, WestCAT, and Greyhound regional bus service. The bottom floor will eventually harbor Caltrain, which is expected to be done by 2028, and the ambitious California High-Speed Rail project, which will connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. Wi-Fi? Yes, free wi-fi is available. Let’s talk about the park While the nuts and bolts of the center involve the transit terminuses, the 11 o’clock number here is the 5.4-acre rooftop park, designed by Berkeley’s PWP Landscape Architecture, that gilds the pragmatic transportation rumblings below.<doc-sep>With high-speed rail a distant dream and its mall space still a shell, officials at the newly opened Transbay Transit Center are scrambling to come up with the $27.5 million a year needed to run the three-block-long mega-bus station and rooftop park. And from the looks of things, it will be drivers crossing the bay’s seven state-owned bridges who will be shelling out as much as $17 million a year in toll money to maintain the center — at least in the short term. That’s more than three times the amount allocated from tolls for either the temporary or the old Transbay Terminal that the new center replaced. “That’s just the way it is,” says regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission spokesman Randy Rentschler, who points out that tolls have been used to subsidize transbay operations since the Bay Bridge was built in the 1930s. “Nothing is for free,” he said. The $2.2 billion terminal, officially known as the Salesforce Transit Center, was initially envisioned as a hub for buses from multiple transit agencies, Caltrain and high-speed rail that would draw more than 100,000 passengers a day. But without high-speed rail, there will be only about 13,000 AC Transit trips in and out of the “Grand Central Terminal of the West” on weekdays. There will be only about half that number on Muni. Now Playing: In the works for a decade, the new transit center combines muscular architecture with a lush varied park. Video: Carlos Avila Gonzalez The lower-than-expected ridership numbers mean less foot traffic to support the center’s still unfinished, 100,000-square-foot mall, a hoped-for source of operating revenue. Mark Zabaneh, executive director of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which operates the building, said retail interest in the mall is strong now, but “if the economy takes a downturn, we have some risks.” In the meantime, the authority needs about $8 million a year for police and private security patrols to keep the park and station from becoming an ad-hoc homeless shelter, like the old terminal was. Another $19 million is needed to keep the lights and power on and to keep the place clean, including maintaining the 5.4-acre park. The biggest chunk of money — about $11 million — will come directly from bridge tolls, including money from Regional Measure 3, the recently approved toll increase for transit projects. The rest of the operating budget comes from sources such as the Salesforce naming rights, development fees from nearby towers and revenue from special events. Nevertheless, the transit center is looking at an $8 million hole next year — so Muni and AC Transit have agreed “to fund whatever the gap is,” Zabaneh said. From what we hear, AC Transit may use its own cut of toll money to help cover its $5.9 million obligation — so those drivers crossing Bay Area bridges are looking at paying a total of $17 million toward the center’s operations. “It’s a large amount of money,” said AC Transit spokesman Robert Lyles. “We are working with (regional transportation planners) to figure out our options.” State Assemblywoman Catharine Baker, whose 16th District covers commuter-heavy central and southern Contra Costa County, said the latest bridge toll increase was sold with the promise of “bridge maintenance, road construction and congestion relief.” “To me, this is another example of voters being told one thing to extract more money from them, and then after it has passed, the dollars going to different place,” said Baker, R-San Ramon. “It’s frustrating ... and I’m disappointed to hear that.” About the ceremony: Interesting to note who was — and who wasn’t — at Friday’s big ribbon-cutting ceremony for the $2.16 billion Transbay Transit Center. Steve Heminger, the longtime head of the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which has poured more than $500 million into the project — including a $150 million bailout — was on vacation. (We’re told he’s always off in August.) Former transbay director Maria Ayerdi — the initial force behind the project who was pushed out of her job two years ago over soaring costs — was onstage, front and center. Dressed all in white, she told the crowd, “Immigrants can achieve great things when given the opportunity.” As part of Ayerdi’s severance agreement, Transbay Joint Powers Authority officials agreed to give her a speaking role at the opening and include her name on the official plaque inside the terminal. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who a couple of months back RSVPd that he couldn’t attend, showed up at the last minute for a quick tour of the rooftop park and to say hello, but didn’t stick around for all the speeches and the ceremonial ribbon cutting. A decade ago, then-Mayor Newsom had insisted he wouldn’t allow the terminal to be built without funding for high-speed rail, declaring: “We’re not going to build a $2 billion bus station under my watch.” And we didn’t build a $2 billion bus station. Instead, we built a $2.16 billion bus station. San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 415-777-8815, or email matierandross@ sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross<doc-sep>Update: Earlier this week, the Transbay Joint Powers Association [TJPA] would not quite confirm the reported August 12 opening date, preferring to wait until it was time for an official announcement. Friday morning the word came out: The public will get its first look inside the new multi-billion dollar terminal on August 11, when TJPA hosts a “neighborhood block party” event to mark the completion of the eight-year-long process. Regular service in the new structure will kick off on August 12, with rooftop park, connector bridge, shopping, gondola, and of course Muni bus service and all. After years of waiting and months of delays, we have a date: The new Transbay Transit Center, complete with its 5.4 acre rooftop park and dynamite views of the ever-changing South Beach skyline, will open to the public on August 12. That’s what San Francisco Chronicle urban design critic John King reports. The Transbay Joint Powers Association was not immediately able to confirm the date when asked, but it’s a day that’s been floated as a potential opener in the past. The latest weekly construction update released by TJPA on July 5 assures the public, “The Transit Center is nearing completion. The ground level Muni Plaza (between Beale Street and Fremont Street) is now open, with the Grand Hall, Bus Deck, and Roof Park opening this summer.” The city hoped to have construction on the long-in-the-making transit hub finalized last December, with public access and Muni service to follow some weeks later. But labor shortages and other delays pushed that date back, and back, and back, to the point that the most recent July target date was at least the fifth one in 2018. It now appears that contractors will make that deadline at least, leaving a few weeks for finishing touches and to train bus drivers how to navigate the facility. Of course, it will be many years more until the building has train service, making it something of a long-term work in progress. But at least curious passersby will finally be able to scope out the view—and the ever-increasing foliage—from up top.<doc-sep>
Several busloads of dignitaries, bureaucrats and transit buffs gathered Friday to mark the completion of a transit facility that someday, they hope, will connect the Bay Area to regions beyond. The ribbon-cutting took place in the sky-lit, art-filled hall of the new Transbay Transit Center at Mission and Fremont streets in San Francisco. The structure is topped by a 5.4-acre park and includes a bus-only elevated roadway connecting it to the Bay Bridge. Bus service begins on Sunday at the futuristic structure, which extends a quarter-mile and crosses above Fremont and First streets. It replaces the Transbay Terminal, a little-loved facility that closed in 2010. “I used to commute into the old building, and it was a miserable sort of place,” said Jake Mackenzie, chair of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which committed $450 million to the $2.16 billion structure. “This is not a miserable place. This is cool.” Mackenzie was one of 12 speakers during the hour-long event — a political line-up that extended from San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim, whose district includes the transit center, to U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was speaker of the House of Representatives when demolition of the prior terminal began. “This is a truly revolutionary initiative, worthy of this cradle of innovation,” Pelosi proclaimed a few minutes after reminding the audience of 300 or so, “We have more to do.” She’s right. The new complex includes a federally funded, $400 million subterranean shell designed to hold a two-level train station. The idea is for Caltrain commuter service from the South Bay to finally reach the Financial District, along with high speed rail service from Los Angeles. But there’s an estimated cost of at least $4 billion to extend rail lines underground from Mission Bay and no financial blueprint on how to do this. Several other speakers emphasized that the center’s second phase is essential. In the words of Assemblyman Phil Ting, whose district includes the west side of San Francisco, “Monday, we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.” But the emphasis was on celebrating a project that, boosters say, has created more than 14,000 jobs in the Bay Area and spurred $9 billion in nearby private development. “I want to thank residents for their patience,” said Kim, who took office in 2011. “Back then it would have been difficult for any of us to predict what would happen in the years that followed ... This neighborhood has been ground zero for development, 24 hours a day.” Construction workers remain busy. All week long they’ve been snapping ceiling panels into place or pouring concrete for new sidewalks and a dozen other late touches. Minna Street between First and Second streets, which eventually is intended to be lined with shops, still needs to be repaved. Open house The new Transbay Transit Center will be open to the public from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, with the rooftop park staying open until 9. Transit operations begin on Sunday. See More Collapse They was, however, signage bearing the facility’s official name — Salesforce Transit Center. The tech company, which has its headquarters in the new skyline-topping tower that is connected to the rooftop park by a footbridge, will pay at least $110 million over the next 25 years to help fund the operations of the center. Other speakers included Mayor London Breed, who recalled the old terminal as “a dark and dreary place we were eager to avoid.” That was quite a contrast to the description of the new structure offered by Ed Reiskin, a member of the board of directors of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which developed the transit center. “It’s an amazing facility,” said Reiskin, who also heads the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency. “We should be providing amazing facilities for our transit riders, and we’ve actually done it here.” John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchron