Posted Apr 7, 2026, 4:25 PM
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你的媽媽
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: The Bay
Posts: 11,555
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This article includes some updates on 50 First.
Quote:
S.F.’s next skyscraper push tests a risky bet: Offices can still lead downtown’s comeback
By Laura Waxmann, Staff Writer
April 7, 2026
Last month, inside the “Rubberband” room in architecture firm Gensler’s San Francisco headquarters a group of design, real estate and marketing heavyweights discussed their plans for 50 First Street — a 910-foot office tower that could help define the city’s next chapter. The concept behind the Rubberband room is simple: to “stretch ideas without breaking,” said Randy Howder, Gensler’s regional managing principal. It’s an apt analogy for the long-stalled project formerly known as the Oceanwide Center, a development conceived during the city’s last tech boom, pushed to its limits by financial upheaval and then upended by a pandemic that reshaped how offices are used. Now, the project is being updated for a new era of work — an effort that calls for the careful balancing of both ambition and restraint in a changed city.
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Kingsley said the 50 First Street project has already reached a key milestone, with conceptual design complete and schematic work launched last week as the team targets a mid-June submission to city planners for a compliance review. The project also has a notable head start: Its foundation is already in place from the previous development team, potentially shaving years off the timeline and several hundred million dollars from the project’s costs. As a result, the tower could be delivered in as little as three years, according to its developers. Some in the local real estate community remain skeptical that the San Francisco Recovery Fund will ultimately take 50 First Street through construction, suggesting that the group could sell its re-entitled project to another developer that would build it — a well established play in downtown’s development cycle. But Gonzalez, the longtime labor leader representing the Building Trades, said the team has committed to using union labor and is fully prepared to see the tower through. “The fact that Dan Kingsley is involved means dirt is going to fly.”
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Howder, of Gensler, said the 50 First Street tower isn’t being tailored to any single tenant, yet. Instead, the team is developing a “unique set of amenities” designed to attract a range of office users while creating public spaces that will draw the city in. The firm has built offices for clients from AI startups to law firms, each with distinct priorities. “An AI company is much more indexed on in-person collaboration and event spaces,” Howder said, noting that tenants in general are moving away from the traditional core-and-perimeter office model. After the pandemic, the team is setting new goals around energy efficiency, indoor air quality, volume and views: “We’re going to be leading where the market will be going,” he said.
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https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/downtown-office-tower-race-22162316.php
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