Designing the Green Transport Refueling Hub by Shannon Devine As many of you know I am working on a project to build a biofuel refinery in the Bayview District of San Francisco. Since the last OWA Retreat I have rethought the design. The project is now called a Green Transport Fueling Hub. There will be car chargers and electric bus chargers, self tours of the plant operations, snack bar and a deck with those exercise bikes that produce energy as you ride. The plant will process up to 40,000 gallons of waste cooking oil a month into biodiesel fuel. The biodiesel will be blended for different marine shipping and trucking fleets per their needs. Each Green Hub will be designed as a Roadside Attraction. The one in San Francisco will be inspired by the Richmond power plant with lights, exposed metal. The lights will be powered by solar panels, on top of awnings. To tell you the truth, the design is very schematic now. Next step is a model to sort it out. By the time you read this, goddess willing, the project will be filed with the SF Planning Department. My goal with this project is to increase prosperity in the Bayview Hunter's Point by reducing carbon emissions, creating new jobs and helping stabilize a corner of Bay Shore Blvd. The corner of Bay Shore and Oakdale, up a concrete thrown path is a crack dealer's paradise. The hardest thing for me is to believe in my project and manifest it. There are many plutocratic and political maneuvers to be made, piles of forms for grants and oversight departments that issue permits to build and operate. Carolyne Orazi volunteered at the Christmas Party 2008 to help me organize and even fill out the dreaded paperwork. She has been absolutely a dream and shows up each week for 3 hours to help me. I don't think I would have gotten this far without her help. Friends of the Urban Forest will be planting two trees early in April. I have completed planting climbing, scented pink roses on the existing chain link fence. I will notify OWA by email when I have the exact date. Please come. This newsletter goes out to an extremely experienced and talented group of Women Architects and Designers. If anyone is interested in joining the Green Hub Manifest Expedition, please feel free to contact me and come visit my office for coffee. Did I remember to say thank you to OWA? You helped me lick my wounds from my divorce and estrangement and get moving again in this crazy world. |
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Newsletter | Mar/Apr 2009