UC Hastings plans new housing, academic towers in Tenderloin

Marlize van Romburgh
Digital Producer- San Francisco Business Times

The University of California Hastings College of the Law has quietly submitted plans for a new academic building and student residential hall at its Tenderloin campus.

The public law school plans to build an academic building on a vacant lot it owns at 333 Golden Gate Ave., between Larkin and Hyde streets, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. That building would replace Snodgrass Hall, a structure at 198 McAllister Ave. that originally housed the law school. Eventually, the school plans to tear down Snodgrass Hall and replace it with a residential tower with up to 400 units of student housing, the Chronicle reported.

Gov. Jerry Brown reportedly supports the plan and his proposed state budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year includes $45 million carved out for revamps at UC Hastings, the Chronicle noted.

The law school’s bold plans come against the backdrop of a changing Tenderloin. Long a hotbed of drugs, prostitution and gun violence, San Francisco’s grittiest neighborhood now appears to be undergoing a transformation sparked by the Mid-Market and Civic Center areas.

“I’ve never seen a revitalization around Hastings like the one that is going on now,” Bruce Simon, a member of the law school’s board of directors who graduated from there in 1980 told the Chronicle. “It’s important that Hastings keep up with the neighborhood, especially since the school is so central to that part of town.”

The law school currently provides housing for about 20 percent of its students, the Chronicle reported, at McAllister Tower, a historic building at 100 McAllister.

[Source]: San Francisco Business Times