On Friday the developer Hines — the company that co-developed the Salesforce Tower, which rises 1,075 feet — filed an application calling for a slender 1,225-foot tower to replace an office building at 77 Beale St. The tower, which would be 150 feet taller than the 1,075-foot Salesforce Tower, would include 1.6 million square feet of office space, along with retail and restaurants opening onto a new mid-block public garden.
The project, which encompasses an entire city block, also calls for the restoration of the two original historic buildings in the PG&E/Matson Block — 215 and 245 Market St. — and the conversion of the small office building at 25 Beale St. to 120 housing units.
Pelli’s original Salesforce Tower plan was 1200 ft. and one of the original proposals by SOM was 1375 ft. The original plan for Wilshire Grand was 1250 ft.
If those proposals are anything to go by, these firms seem to think something between 1200-1400 is doable in earthquake county… but of course, both of them got downsized. Salesforce was more for political/shadow-related reasons. I’m not so sure about Wilshire Grand.
I would wager it’s more about what’s financially feasible than what’s technically possible. Building supertalls is already exorbitantly expensive — when you add in all the earthquake-resistance technology, the return on investment probably evaporates at a certain height.
Given all that, plus the current development climate in SF, I would be pretty if this actually gets built at 1225 ft. But I’d be happy to be wrong!
