Architectural master plans invariably depict a future too good to be true, where the buildings look sharp and the sidewalks are full, the people are lithe and the weather's just right.

So don't buy every eye-popping early detail of the 14-acre campus that online software giant Salesforce wants to build in San Francisco's Mission Bay. But if real life comes close to the vibrant collage depicted in the plan that begins making the public review rounds next week, that underwhelming redevelopment district may get the jolt it needs.

Last fall Salesforce bought Mission Bay's remaining commercial sites between Third Street and the water, across from the UCSF-Mission Bay campus and the university's $1.5 billion hospital complex that's under construction. The firm hopes to start construction next year on the first of eight buildings that eventually could house 8,000 workers, up from the 2,500 the company now has in the Financial District.

When the neighborhood's redevelopment plan was approved in 1998, these blocks were envisioned as a lure for biomedical companies. Keeping Salesforce in the city is an economic boon of a different sort, and the company agreed to follow Mission Bay's development guidelines.

Those guidelines emphasize a street grid dotted with plazas and lined with buildings at heights ranging from 90 to 160 feet. The result so far is a polite but stocky landscape with little reason to linger or look twice.

Amping up the plan

The master plan crafted for Salesforce by Mexico City's Legorreta and Legorreta works hard to amp things up.

The firm caught Salesforce founder Marc Benioff's eye with its UCSF community center, a red stucco cube enlivened by an oversized purple-walled courtyard and, at one corner, a steep sculptural tower. It's the only campus building that brings a smile; it also typifies the firm's knack for spirited buildings that strive to catch the eye.

But if a single bravura building can be a relief, a dozen in close quarters could be relentless, as even the architects acknowledge.

"We have to be humble," says Ricardo Legorreta, whose awards include a gold medal from the American Institute of Architects. "We don't want to build a monument to ourselves, we want to build a monument to the city."

Adds his son, Victor: "The challenge is to make the buildings look like cousins, not too similar."

Colors and patterns

The scheme that's evolved has a wider ranger of colors and window patterns than the firm's norm, and most buildings would come wrapped in stone or terra cotta rather than stucco. They'd also include brash twists - a corner fractured by stepped-back terraces here, a stone-clad canopy perched on 90-foot-high columns there. A stack of meeting rooms at the southwest corner of the campus is wrapped in a mesh-like purple skin.

At least three of the 14 acres would be publicly accessible at all hours, centered on a broad plaza leading from Third Street to a planned bayside neighborhood park. The office buildings along Third Street would include shops, a child care center and restaurants. (Unlike Google, Salesforce doesn't have a four-star cafeteria as a recruiting tool.)

Salesforce and the Legorretas have listened to the city's desire for buildings and spaces that feel like part of the neighborhood. There's also a strong contingent of Bay Area talent on the design team alongside the Legorretas and their associated firm, Flad Architects. This includes landscape architects Andrea Cochran and Tom Leader, each of whom have been finalists in the National Design Awards, and urban designer Evan Rose.

The master plan stage is always the rosiest time of a development push, and the public exertion on this one is just starting. After a June 9 presentation to Mission Bay's citizen advisory committee, a formal application is expected to be filed with the redevelopment agency later this month.

City satisfied so far

Still, city officials voice satisfaction with the first round of work.

"We're at the point where we're excited about it," says Kelley Kahn, the redevelopment agency's project manager for Mission Bay. "They're making sure that our concerns about an open campus are met."

In any other part of the city, a color-saturated set of Legorretas would be too much. But in a redevelopment district where too much of what's been built so far is bottom-line bland, they might turn out to be just what the doctor ordered.

E-mail John King at