Guide to the Urban Center

The ground floor is where the building interacts with the public. With floor to ceiling windows, the space is open to the street, and becomes the place for education and information. A visitor can wander inside and explore the exhibition in the storefront gallery (first up: "Agents of Change: Civic Idealism and the Making of San Francisco," opening May 28) read what's happening with civic, policy and planning events on the community board or learn about SPUR from Visitor Services or the membership department. The Urban Center is meant to encourage civic involvement; involvement breeds ownership and it's that engagement that SPUR hopes to inspire.

With high ceilings, white walls and polished concrete floors, the space is elegantly modern and industrial, but warm with contrasts of wood and fiber materials. It's a spare, flexible room to accommodate the rotating exhibits and events.

The second floor's gallery hosts the artful Major Donor Wall, a three dimensional installation featuring imagery from around the Bay Area. This gallery doubles as a lobby for the floor's main use: SPUR's meeting room, its own town hall. It's through the wall of glass doors, and into the spacious room with 15' high ceilings and a carpet the shade of tomato soup where the action happens. The room will host everything from the renowned lunchtime forums to the upcoming series of evening lectures, Citizen Planning Institute classes, policy committees and the meetings of the Board of Directors, a body of 70. This is the place for discussion and debate. The place where SPUR policy is debated, engineered, imagined.

The third floor is devoted to workspace for the policy, publications, administrative, and development departments. This is no hermetically sealed, cubby-divided work place. It's an open floor system—it's primarily one large space—with small breakout and quiet rooms along the south wall. The ceiling is raised, exposing the steel trusses and the workings of the building. It's a light space with a low white work surface system, white wool swivel chairs, long low bookcases, and carpet that varies in pattern across the room.

The fourth floor holds the reading room, meeting area and roof deck. If you've walked up the eight sets of stairs through the translucent glass lit stairwell, it feels like you've arrived at a hidden penthouse. Set back from the street face, it's quieter here. The colors are muted grays and blue. The room is outfitted with sleek Vitra furniture: long white conference tables, and singular chairs a reader could disappear in. The front of the room opens onto the roof deck, a wood slatted base and a succulent garden. The balcony looks out over Mission Street. This fitting end to the building tour reveals much of SPUR's work: you can hear the bustle of the street life below, the cars and busses moving; people are walking along the sidewalks, bicycles whizzing along the road. The Yerba Buena Center, an early SPUR project, is in the distance. It's a palpable sense of accomplishment. From here, the urban life of San Francisco is thriving and well.