San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Proposed ‘floating cube’ tower in S.F. on hold
Plans to augment San Francisco’s skyline with a 65-story skyscraper featuring a “floating cube” at its top appear to be on hold.
For more than two years, the city’s Planning Department has been reviewing a redevelopment plan that proposes replacing an aging, three-story office building at 620 Folsom St. with the architecturally unique housing tower, which would hold more than 700 renta.l apartments. Some of those units would be inside a five-story crown that appears detached from the project, resembling a cube hovering over the rest of the tower, according to renderings by Miami-based design firm Arquitectonica on file with the department.
But department records also indicate that the housing project was “on hold” as of last fall.
When contacted this week, planning officials were unable to confirm the status of the project, saying they had not received written confirmation from the development team, which includes local developer Align Real Estate and development brokerage Ground Matrix, headed by Chris Foley of real estate agency Polaris Pacific.
However, the city’s Department of Building Inspection confirmed that, earlier this week, the team requested to retract a building permit that it applied for in late 2022, starting a process that allows it to recover some of the costs associated with the permit, according to the department.
While the tower’s developers have not responded to inquiries
about the project’s status, it is facing economic conditions that present serious challenges to housing construction: increasing construction costs, high interest rates that make it difficult to obtain construction loans, and softening rents.
The project’s delay comes as the city faces a state mandate to approve some 82,000 new homes over the next eight years in an effort to relieve the Bay Area’s housing shortage.
First pitched in summer 2021, the 620 Folsom project was originally envisioned as a roughly 600-unit tower that would rise
58 stories between Second and Hawthorne streets, near Moscone Center. The project was later revised, with its developers seeking to boost its height to 62 stories, adding more than 200 units, in 2022. They ultimately proposed a 65-story tower with 711 apartments, planning records show.
The team filed for the building permit that it is now seeking to cancel for that version of the project. Approval of the permit was dependent on the tower, estimated to cost about $250 million to develop, winning its entitlements.
What happens next — and whether the team is working to redesign the project once more in an effort to ensure its feasibility — is unclear. State laws that became effective this year would provide the project with a boost if it is reconfigured to add housing units at varying income levels, and a number of developers in recent months have modified planned and entitled projects across the city to take advantage of the change.
The team also has an option to buy the project site from the property owner, McLaughlin Family Associates LP, which it has not exercised.
More recently, Align has worked to buy the Webster Street Safeway in San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood, which is slated to close at the end of the year, with plans to remake the property into housing and new commercial space. The timeline for that project is not known, as the developer has yet to file a formal application with the city.
The planned 620 Folsom tower joins a number of projects in San Francisco — some planned and some in the midst of construction — that have stalled as economic conditions worsened over the past two years. Over the summer, construction of Hayes Point, a 47-story mixed-use tower with 333 condos and nearly 300,000 square feet of office space at 30 Van Ness Ave., was halted indefinitely. Work stopped just seven months after construction began, with its development team citing changing market conditions.
The $3.5 billion mixed-use redevelopment effort that’s been ongoing at Pier 70 since 2018 was halted in 2022 for the same reasons. That project, by Brookfield Properties, calls for the creation of a neighborhood on the central waterfront, with some 2,000 new homes and 2.3 million square feet of commercial space. Others, like the remake of the former PG&E headquarters in downtown by developer Hines, which would include new offices and housing, have yet to advance beyond initial pitches.