The narrow, bare lot that bisects Octavia Boulevard and Market Street will soon be filled with a futuristic glass edifice as part of a major neighborhood renovation by San Francisco.

Architect Stanley Saitowitz took home the gold prize in a 2007 competition to redevelop the empty lots that line Octavia, according to Kearstin Dischinger, the project manager for the San Francisco Planning Department's Octavia-Market Project.

Saitowitz's architecture firm, Natoma Architects, Inc., is currently having their designs approved by the planning department with hopes of starting construction next year on 49 apartments at 4 Octavia Blvd., according to the department.

The department couldn't comment on a price tag for the housing units because the costs would have to be evaluated against market rates after the apartments are built.

As drivers exit Highway 101, they'll see the glass-cased apartment building, welcoming them through the "Octavia Gateway," according to Natoma.

The First Baptist Church, with its large dome, has become one pylon of the new entrance to Octavia Boulevard. The apartment building will complete the gateposts for the Octavia Gateway, according to the architecture firm.

However, the Octavia project has been in oversight by the planning department for almost a decade, ever since the renovation of the Hayes Valley neighborhood.

The Octavia project is working with the various neighborhoods it's affecting, from Hayes Valley to the Lower Haight and parts of the Mission, in conjunction with the Better Neighborhoods Plan, aimed at creating more housing and commercial business growth, according to the planning department.

Dischinger said the project spans far past just one apartment building. The plan itself encompasses over 20 different lots -- most of them are vacant and the rest are parking lots.

"It's not a rustbelt city, we don't have abandoned lots," Dischinger said of the city's ownership of the lots.

"There are over 6,000 housing units planned out," she said of the city's intent to create more housing over the next 20 years. "There are also a number of infrastructure projects."

The infrastructure projects include a skate park in place of parking lots underneath a section of Highway 101 near Duboce Street, according to Dischinger, along with street and sidewalk renovations.

"There are a variety of considerations," she said.

Dischinger described the bidding process the planning department goes through in choosing a designer, and ultimately picking private and public contractors, as competitive.

Dischinger and Natoma could not comment on any costs that could be incurred during construction or initial planning because they haven't chosen a contractor yet.

It's been roughly two years since the Natoma firm won the bidding for their designs -- time that the planning department has spent reviewing the designs, according to Dischinger.

The destruction of the Central Freeway, which connected the highway across the neighborhood to Franklin Street, created the numerous empty lots in Hayes Valley and along Octavia. The city destroyed the freeway because of earthquake damage it had sustained during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

In 2005, the current Octavia Boulevard was opened to the public, replacing the double-decker freeway.

"This neighborhood has been revitalized since the freeway was taken out of Hayes Valley," Sam Solano, who works at Timbuk2, a bag store, said. "It was a lot younger, not as much money."

The business owners in Hayes Valley have adjusted well to the change since the freeway's removal.

"I'd have to step over needles to get through the front door 15 years ago," James Sine, owner of Isotope, a comic book lounge on Fell Street, said of the entrance to his store in the Hayes Valley area of the 1990s. "The area has definitely changed."