The only honest answer for right now is: " ¯_(ツ)_/¯ "
Or, could we get two 500’ residential towers right now? That corner has enough office space already IMHO. SF really needs more residential mixed in with the office towers north of Market and increasingly, around Transbay and out Mission Street. Or what about some big office to residential conversions in the older buildings in the Financial District, similar to Wall Street neighborhood in NYC.
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I’d be perfectly happy with that, especially if they can find a way to make the units even moderately affordable. I’ve been hearing from friends in tech real estate that some major SF companies may never go back to full occupancy (some are even incentivizing their employees to go permanent work-from-home). Meanwhile housing is at an all-time crisis point. Having an impressive skyline is cool and all, but a bunch of white elephant office towers sitting empty while people are dying on the streets is a dystopian hellscape.
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Exclusive: Downtown S.F.’s most troubled development could see reboot as buyer emerges
The site may finally go up for auction. Spoke with some fellow attorneys familiar to the site and they mentioned the only hold-up was that Haitong International (the lenders) only wanted to sell to Chinese developers despite numerous offers. They also mentioned that aside from some minor water damage, the site only needed less than $75 million or so to be completed since the foundations are done.
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I hear there are sign of life in SF.
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many people are saying this
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Many such cases!
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https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/sf-skyscraper-planned-at-oceanwide-site-21304771.php
Excerpts from article in the Chron back on January 23:
Now, as San Francisco enters a tentative recovery after a brutal pandemic-era downturn, an unlikely partnership is seeking to revive the site — not with the sprawling, two-tower mixed-use vision once promised — but a more focused bet on downtown’s future: a 910-foot office tower at First and Mission streets with about 1.5 million square feet of space. The effort brings together Jay Yang, a 34-year-old private equity investor from the East Coast comfortable with high-stakes bets, and Dan Kingsley, a 70-year-old local developer who has spent decades navigating the city’s booms, busts and projects others considered too risky.
Kingsley and Yang have yet to name an architect, but the plan is to only revive the larger of Oceanwide Center’s approved towers, which would front First Street: At 910 feet, the tower would come close in height to Salesforce Tower, the city’s tallest existing skyscraper at 1,070 feet, which stands across the street from their project.
The partners still have the option to revive the second tower in the future and said housing could be a possibility there.
Yang and Kingsley’s next test is speed. Reviving Oceanwide Center means clearing the financing and leasing hurdles that have stalled new downtown office construction since the pandemic — and doing so before any rival project breaks ground. Several towers have been proposed in recent years, but none have moved to construction yet. All will need to secure tenant commitments before shovels can break ground, according to market insiders.
With its foundation in place, Oceanwide center is steps ahead of the competition.
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The article makes it sound like they’re keeping the height, which is promising. And unlike the 2WTC situation, this was already designed with tech companies in mind, so I wouldn’t expect a total revamp to “meet contemporary office needs” or whatever. Although it could absolutely get value engineered.
Maybe they’ll open up some terraces to create those private outdoor spaces that high end firms seems to value so much. If they keep the exoskeleton, that could actually look pretty rad.
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Well, the article also states that no architect is named. Eitherway they’re constrained to the existing foundation.
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