From BeyondChron,

Last Thursday, March 9, the Planning Commission held the first of several hearings regarding the Trinity Plaza rebuild. Even though the hearing was more informational and was not an action item, the hour-and-a-half meeting was not without contention.

…[Project architect] Mr. Fort-Brescia proceeded to unfold the Trinity Plaza rebuild that would blend glass, steel, and what seems like elements from nature, but not without Fort-Brescia’s annoying spin that the current Trinity Plaza is a parking lot with a motel in the middle of the city, and an underdeveloped site using an older design of suburbanization in an urban environment as well as the current spin of building housing close to downtown using high-rise structures.

The presentation opened with an overview of the area surrounding the 4+ acres to a look at the current Trinity Plaza footprint and a drawing showing a typical day of sun angles. Based on these sun angles, the design of the rebuild calls for the tallest building at the northeast corner of the property and the shortest at the southwest corner, or at 8th and Market Streets. Next came the overview of the rebuild showing inside courtyards, one near Market Street and a larger, open green space near Mission Street and through the center of the property, for a total of about 63,000 square feet.

Following the presentation, Planning’s Dean Macris expressed his pleasure over the aspect of foot traffic for theaters and restaurants (“a gathering place, if you will, for people”) as well as the “building block” style of the design, but he also pointed to the amount of planned parking for the site (1,450 spaces for 1,900 units), which “surprisingly enough that works out to .75 per unit,” which he editorialized as being “a very workable figure for a C-3 district.”

The BeyondChron article has lots of photos of the proposed design from the presentation, or you can get a full (90 minute) Video On Demand of the presentation from SFGTV @ SFGov.org.

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