Oooooo! if only it were a supertall. SF might move ahead of Seattle in my opinion for the best skylines in US/Canada.

This is completely true--it will allow for the profitable massive floorplates that are really in demand once again, just as they were at 555 California.

I LOVE IT! reminds me of the JHC in my city.

did you mean Western US/Canada?

imo SF is the best in the west by far!

Beautiful!
 

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but it looks like a hybrid of the SOM and Cesar Pelli proposals for the Transbay Tower competition... its basically the SOM structure applied to the massing of the Pelli tower. Looks great IMO

Wow, those renderings that minesweeper posted really changed my initial reaction to this. I only wish the faceting at the top went all the way down. I understand why they made that choice -- to maximize the size of the floor plates on the office floors -- but like that part so much I'd like to be able to see it up close from street level.

Also, can't wait to see more detailed renderings of the shorter tower. The design above looks like a placeholder, at least I hope it is.

Thanks a lot, minesweeper.

Does this still need to be approved? I'm confused on what stage this beautiful tower is in.

Yeah, this still has a ways to go. The height limits have already been increased to allow this tower, but this specific proposal still needs to be approved. The office space in particular is subject to the Proposition M limits. It may need Board of Supervisors approval for the re-routing of Jessie Street. They probably won't have to do a full environmental impact report because the parcel was included in the EIR for the broader Transit District area. But, they still have to go through an environmental evaluation process to determine that. In addition to all this, they'll have to do a shadow study per Proposition K.

The developer is hoping to break ground by the end of next year, but that seems pretty optimistic to me. They should be able to get all needed approvals eventually, but those can take several years to get in this city. If they can skip a full-blown EIR, then maybe the end of next year is feasible.

For those who haven't seen it, Steelblue updated their video animation of the future SF skyline to show this proposal:

http://i.imgur.com/aRml18t.jpg
Source: steelblue/vimeo

For those unfamiliar with SF's development, I made this map which shows all the new projects for the Soma skyline.

This view doesn't even include the 5 towers currently U/C and built in 2009 to the south (One Rincon, 45 Lansing, 399 Fremont, 350 Fremont)

http://i.imgur.com/YtsdfkR.jpg

And here is the (rather dense) area where all this massive development is taking place:

http://i.imgur.com/4SCuWft.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/RFMZQAy.jpg

Wow. Boom City, U.S.A.. Excellent work wakamesalad. :goodpost:

San Francisco's transformation is incredible, and probably going to be its biggest of all time. The next couple of years will be exciting!

Nice work, wakamesalad. You can also include 350 Mission on your list of buildings not shown (it's hidden behind the other Salesforce building).

Financing in place. Entitlements and Prop. M allocation expected by the end of the year.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranci....html?page=all

Wow, mini New York right there


This building rocks by the way, and seems like a pretty legit proposal, can't wait to see it rise!

Amazing news. Speaks volumes for the market, and WHOA, that is an amazing basis. 1.17 acres, $296M, that is over a QUARTER BILLION DOLLARS PER ACRE. I'm positive that NYC is the only other city in America that has seen pricing like that.

The fact that this is now Chinese backed actually comforts me - their cost of capital is much lower than American firms.

So looks like a construction start in 2016? I'm betting that while the money/capital stack is a bit different, the overall plan is similar to Jay Paul's - another office/high end condo tower going up now.

I thought the same thing.

The Chinese have purposed a lot in America. They haven't built a lot, especially major projects yet. I would hold the applause.

But its good to see something happening with this one nonetheless!

^^^Theyve retained an experienced developer (TMG, the seller) to actually help them build it. I'm comforted by the Chinese money aspect of it - I'm thinking it's a definite at this point and even a downturn can be weathered leaving the plan unscathed. That's all I meant. Also, this isn't a Chinese individual, this is a large and experienced Chinese real estate developer/investor as well.

Thank the slow down in the Chinese real estate market also :tup:

China’s Oceanwide Holdings Looks to Transform First and Mission Site in San Francisco

Beijing-based Oceanwide Holdings Co., Ltd. is making a grand entrance into San Francisco with its recently announced plans to spend nearly $300 million for a development site at First and Mission streets, which is slated to house the city’s second-tallest office building.

Oceanwide, through its wholly owned subsidiary Tohigh Property Investment, LLC, agreed to pay $296 million for the 1.17-acre site being sold by San Francisco-based developer TMG Partners and its capital partner Northwood Investors LLC, a global real estate investment and management firm. The property is across from Salesforce Tower, which at 1,070 feet will be San Francisco’s tallest building when its construction is complete in 2017.
Oceanwide was drawn to the 50 First St. site partly as a way to deepen its real estate presence in the United States, according to an Oceanwide news release posted on ChinaSF’s Web site. ChinaSF, a nonprofit that is part of the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, works to connect with Chinese companies looking to invest in the city and helped link Oceanwide to this deal.

“The company is actively implementing [its] overseas investment strategy in order to compete in the international marketplace,” Oceanwide’s news release said.

“The First and Mission project will be the second-tallest landmark development in the heart of San Francisco. This investment will significantly improve the reputation of the company and its overseas investments,” the release said.

The company also noted that it would gain a piece of the city’s in-demand office market where new supply is limited due to Prop. M, which caps the amount of office space that can be developed.

TMG’s development calls for building two mixed-use towers with approximately 2 million square feet of office, retail, residential and hotel space. The company submitted an environmental evaluation application to San Francisco’s Planning Department in July that outlines plans for an approximately 850-foot tower that would contain 1.1 million square feet of office space and about 106 residential units along with retail space. A later proposed 60-foot crown would take the tower to 910 feet. A second 605-foot tower would include 168 hotel rooms and 110 residential units above lobbies and ground-floor retail space, the application said. A total of approximately 59,000 square feet of retail space would be included in the project. The project is still under review by the city, said Gina Simi, a planning department spokeswoman. TMG declined to comment.

TMG and Northwood purchased the site in 2013. London-based Foster + Partners and San Francisco-based Heller Manus Architects are the architects on the project. Oceanwide signed the purchase agreement in November but is still negotiating with TMG on final project management details, said Darlene Chiu Bryant, the executive director of ChinaSF.

The property is in the city’s Transbay district and was rezoned in 2012 under the Transbay Plan, which was designed to encourage density around the Transbay Terminal.

San Francisco is among the U.S. cities attracting Chinese investors, partly due to the city’s strong economy, Chiu Bryant said. Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, New York, Boston and Chicago also are target markets for Chinese investors, she added.

In 2013, Shenzhen-based China Vanke Co. Ltd. partnered with New York-based Tishman Speyer to develop the Lumina condominium project at Main and Folsom streets in San Francisco. That deal also helped raise the city’s profile among Chinese investment companies, Chiu Bryant said. China Vanke is one of the country’s largest residential property developers.

Oceanwide made its first U.S. purchase in December 2013 when it acquired the Fig Central condominium and hotel project across from the Staples Center on Figueroa Street in Los Angeles. That purchase also was made through its Tohigh Property Investment subsidiary. Additionally, the company last month reportedly bought a 186-acre site on a former Sonoma Valley ranch near Kenwood that is approved for a resort and winery.

Oceanwide carries a diverse portfolio with investments in sectors including banking, energy, media and real estate.

http://news.theregistrysf.com/chinas...san-francisco/

Chinese real estate firm to invest $1.6 billion in First and Mission towers.
Feb 9, 2015, 2:07pm PST

Oceanwide Holdings Co. has completed its purchase of the First and Mission Streets land that will hold San Francisco's second-tallest tower. That much we expected. The real surprise is how much Oceanwide says it could spend on the project in all: $1.6 billion, which would make it the largest investment by a Chinese company in a Bay Area development.

The Beijing-based real estate company beat out about a half-dozen buyers and paid $296 million in the off-market deal with developer TMG Partners and Northwood Capital Partners, which the Business Times first reported last month.

The $1.6 billion total investment that Oceanwide would make to build the towers beats out the undisclosed investment that the Zarsion reale estate group of Beijing will make on Oakland's $1.5 billion Brooklyn Basin mixed-use project. Chinese real estate companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in downtown office buildings and condo towers in the Bay Area in the past two years because of a tight Chinese market and loosened foreign capital rules there.

The First and Mission project includes two towers – one 850-foot building with 1.35 million square feet of office space and one 605-foot building with hundreds of condos and hotel rooms. The complex would also include a large open-air plaza. The first tower would fall a couple hundred feet short of reaching Salesforce Tower's potential height, but would be just a bit taller than the Transamerica Pyramid.

The towers' designs by starchitect Foster + Partners (which designed the Apple spaceship campus) and local architecture firm Heller Manus garnered big headlines, called "gasp-inducing" by the San Francisco Chronicle. Once the world saw the designs, investors started calling even though the site wasn't even fully approved, said TMG Chairman Michael Covarrubias.
"The most important thing we did was get a design concept with a world-class architect partnership – Foster from an international standpoint and Heller Manus from a local standpoint," Covarrubias said, speaking publicly about the deal for the first time.

TMG struck a development agreement with Oceanwide to stay on at least through the city's entitlement process, which should wrap up this year, Covarrubias said. The architecture team will also stay in place.
The project is part of the city's Transbay zoning plan, so it has an easier path to approvals. It's critical for the project to get an approval this year before the city hits its office space cap under Prop. M.
"What we'd always intended was we want to get this thing entitled. We have important relationships with the architects and the city. We promised we'd get something that gets built. The entitlement was what we focused on," he said.
Covarrubias declined to say how much Oceanwide would pay TMG for its role. Oceanwide couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

Oceanwide is also spending about $1 billion on a project in downtown Los Angeles. It has also scooped up more than 100 acres of property, zoned for a luxury hotel, in Sonoma. Oceanwide Chairman Lu Zhiqiang has purchased three mega mansions in Atherton.

TMG and Oceanwide were linked up by China SF, a nonprofit that helps local companies attract investment from Chinese companies. Jeffrey Heller of Heller Manus, who has done a wealth of business in the country, said "establishing trust" with Chinese companies was key. "The Chinese rely less on the lawyer world and more on the relationship world. The testing out of the relationship is extremely high with the Chinese. If they don't like the relationship they won't engage," Heller said.

Plus, "people from China like to send their kids here and have a place here," he added.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranci....html?page=all