The $44 million Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens opened in 1993 in the burgeoning South of Market District on Third Street between Mission and Howard Streets. Part of the 22-acre Yerba Buena Gardens development, the complex overlooks the Esplanade, a five-acre downtown park which includes terrace cafes, an outdoor performance area with lawn seating for 5,000 and a walk-through waterfall memorial dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King. It is devoted to showcasing art and artists from the multi-cultural community and features diverse programming in dance, theater, music, visual arts, films, installations and festivals.

Scarcely ten years ago, the area around San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center was little more than a patchwork of parking lots.

By January, 1995 upon the opening of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Newsweek was calling it "the most concentrated arts district west of the Hudson River." After all, the new arts institution was joining the decades-in-the-making, multi-ethnic visual and performing arts complex, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which had opened atop the underground Moscone Convention Center North two years prior. The Cartoon Art Museum and California Historical Society soon followed.

Today, Yerba Buena Gardens is the lush, landscaped centerpiece of this culture hub. And the excitement continues to build. Surrounding this block-long greenbelt, construction continues at a breakneck pace in the 22-acre Yerba Buena Gardens mixed-use development. 

Here are some of the other highlights:

CHILDREN'S CENTER

Upon its September, 1998 completion on top of the roof of Moscone Center South, the $56 million Children's Center will be notable as one of the few civic sites in the nation--an entire city block--dedicated to children and youth. Major elements of this ambitious project will be a studio for technology and the arts, a children's garden and carousel, ice skating rink and bowling center, and child care center.

SONY'S METREON ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX

Adjacent to the Yerba Buena Gardens Esplanade, the 350,000 square-foot, four-story entertainment complex, Metreon, will draw a projected six to eight million people when completed in fall 1998. Components of the center include 15-screen cinema theaters, a 600-seat Imax theater, a children's world designed by author Maurice Sendak, technology and interactive experiences, restaurants and retail stores.

ON THE DRAWING BOARD

In addition to these projects already underway, the Jewish Museum and its next door neighbor Mexican Museum across Mission St. from the Esplanade are in the design stage, to be completed in the year 2000.

Adjacent to these two cultural arts institutions a 42-story condo-hotel-retail skyscaper has just been approved by the City's Redevelopment Agency commission. The 400-foot tower on Market St. between Third and Fourth streets would be built on the last large open parcel in the 22-acre Yerba Buena area, and would be completed in the spring of 2001.