Published: August, 2013
In July, Mayor Edwin M. Lee, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, Supervisor Jane Kim, the San Francisco Port Commission and local officials celebrated the opening of the Brannan Street Wharf, a newly constructed two-acre public park on the Embarcadero in the heart of the South Beach neighborhood. The $26 million wharf includes a neighborhood green; a waterside walkway with seating and picnic tables; a shade structure; and interpretive features about the height of the tide and the site’s rich maritime and cultural history. It is located on the Embarcadero at the former sites of Piers 34 and 36.
"The new Brannan Street Wharf is another destination on our world-class waterfront," said Mayor Edwin M. Lee. "This beautiful recreational green open space adds to the vitality and excitement of the South Beach neighborhood and provides all visitors and residents with sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay, the Bay Bridge and, this summer, the 34th America’s Cup team camps at Piers 30-32."
The wharf includes a 52-foot long interpretive exhibit featuring the multi-faceted history and importance of the site to maritime shipping, Chinese immigration, and labor struggles that established San Francisco as the base for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
"The new Brannan Street Wharf represents the fabric of the South Beach community, which is rich in maritime history, diverse in culture and built on the strength of our local labor," said Port of San Francisco Executive Director Monique Moyer.
During the ribbon cutting ceremony, the crowd of nearly 300 people was delighted when Otis Redding III, son of the late Otis Redding, performed the famous song "Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay." In the summer of 1967, Otis Redding was inspired to write the song as he sat on a houseboat in Sausalito, watching the tide roll in and out of San Francisco’s Bay. The Brannan Street Wharf project includes three large tidal columns that illustrate tidal change of the Bay each day. Lyrics to the song by Otis Redding are cast in bronze at the base of one of the tidal columns.
The Brannan Street Wharf includes a reinforced concrete deck supported by 260 piles driven over 80 feet into the bay floor by Dutra Construction. The deck includes 340 tons of reinforcing and 3,600 cubic yards of concrete. The wharf is designed for sustainability; materials were chosen to perform well in the salt water environment, the design accommodates 75 years of projected sea level rise, and the structure will ride out small earthquakes and survive major shakers with repairable damage. It is the first wharf in San Francisco to include instrumentation to measure structural response during earthquakes, which will advance the study of earthquake engineering as well as aid in assessing post-earthquake inspection.
