- By Patrick Hoge | Examiner staff writer |
- Mar 10, 2025 (SFExaminer.com)
Professing faith in both San Francisco’s luxury office market and a wider downtown recovery, executives with Related California are pushing ahead with ambitious plans for a $750 million, 41-story luxury office-and-hotel tower development in The City’s north Financial District.
The project, which is being co-sponsored by The City, would demolish an aging fire station at the corner of Sansome and Washington streets. It would deliver, free of charge to San Francisco, a new $40 million firehouse on the other side of the block, which is located between the Transamerica Pyramid and One Maritime Plaza.
“We believe this is one of the best locations in The City for the best office building,” said Gino Canori, president of Related California, which is a subsidiary of the national real estate titan Related Companies.
Related California, which hopes to start construction in 2027 and finish by 2030, is charging ahead even though city office vacancy rates have been very high since the onset of COVID-19, and the local hotel market has yet to recover fully.
Despite such dour indicators, company officials say demand for the highest-quality office spaces with views is actually very high. They contend their tower’s offices — all on upper floors and featuring 11-foot tall windows — will offer vista galore across the low-slung North Waterfront neighborhood to the Golden Gate Bridge and beyond, as well as east toward the Bay Bridge.
Related California has taken drone photographs to let people see the sweeping views from aloft, said Nicholas Vanderboom, Related California’s chief operating officer. He provided data showing the vacancy rate in Class AA offices with views at 6.9%, versus 36.7% for the market as a whole.
The proposal for 530 Sansome St. is thus “a very contrarian bet, but it’s not one based on a whim,” said Matthew Witte, the company’s executive vice president of acquisitions and development.
San Francisco has among the oldest office stocks of any major metropolitan city in the country, with many buildings from the 1950s and 1960s that are “really quite outdated,” Witte said. He said that’s particularly true north of Market Street, where many of the buildings are even older. There has been a similar paucity of new top-tier hotels, he said.
Related California’s hotel and office project would thus satisfy strong demand for premium office space that is in short supply, Witte said.
Top-tier companies around the country want to provide employees with enjoyable places to work, in part to incentivize people to come to offices, said Witte, who used words like “bespoke” and “hospitality-oriented” to describe the Sansome Street plans.
Witte cited the example of The Cove, a $20 million center under development at 525 Market St. that promises to offer coworking space and other “hospitality services” for building tenants.
“What everybody wants is to get their employees back in the office,” Witte said. “Landlords want it. The City wants it, the companies want it, and you’ve got to make it attractive.”
Related California is also banking on the growing popularity of the nearby Jackson Square neighborhood, an area filled with historic buildings that has been increasingly popular with venture capitalists and tech companies, among others.
Another attraction is the neighboring Transamerica Pyramid complex just across Sansome Street with its redwood grove accessible on foot via Mark Twain Street. Its owner recently completed a $250 million renovation of the property, including the tower and grounds.
Related’s proposal calls for converting all of Merchant Street between Battery and Sansome streets into privately owned public open space and using landscaping and other elements to create continuity with the Transamerica complex.
Related California won city approval in 2021 to build a roughly 200-foot tall, mixed-use hotel-and-office tower at 530 Sansome with a roughly 200-room hotel, a fitness club, office space and a ground-floor restaurant, among other amenities. That plan called for a new fire station in the base of the structure.
EX // TOP STORIES
Legal-aid organizations see surge in need under Trump
Now, they say they’re hoping for a surge in funding that might not come
Reports of electric cars’ death are greatly exaggerated
But charging stands in the way of widespread adoption, Conor Johnston argues
Salesforce drops diversity goals
Headed by Marc Benioff, long a proponent of liberal causes, the software giant is backing away from its prior support for DEI
The company’s thinking continued to shift following the pandemic, after which Related California executives took note of the so-called “flight to quality” downtown, particularly offices with views. That is why the offices are all on the top part of the building, and the design incorporates a number of outdoor terraces, while the hotel is lower down, Witte said.
Last August, Related California put forward a revised vision for a 574-foot tall tower on the block bounded by Sansome, Washington, Battery and Merchant streets. In December, the Board of Supervisors endorsed the key terms of the new plan.
It would feature a cafe and “chef-driven” restaurant, concierge services, a five-star luxury hotel run by an as-yet unnamed operator, conference space and various other amenities, such as a spa and fitness center. The building would also have relatively small floor plates — which are in demand — particularly toward the top, where the structure would taper.
The company would build a separate, four-story firehouse, including the basement, on a plot it acquired through a deed-in-lieu at the corner of Merchant and Washington streets. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the new firehouse would include a roof deck.
City fire and real-estate officials are listed as cosponsors of the project, which would require the demolition of three nearly 118-year-old buildings, each two or three stories in height. One building would have to be delisted from The City’s register of historic structures, according to a Related California spokeswoman. That site would house the new fire station.
A draft environmental impact report on the proposed project, required by the California Environmental Quality Act to identify potential effects and alternatives, is set to be released Tuesday.
That will kick off a period of public comment leading to hearings before The City’s Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors, which would have to approve waiving the site’s 200-foot height limit, the company spokeswoman said.
Officials at Related are confident enough in the project’s prospects that they have started meeting with brokers to line up tenants and are seeking out potential hotel operators.
They previously agreed to pay roughly $4.5 million toward a senior housing project in Chinatown, whether the project gets built or not, and half of it within six months of getting the project entitled.
Anne Taupier, director of development for The City’s Office of Economic and Welfare Development, said in a prepared statement that city officials see the development as “a catalytic opportunity” for downtown San Francisco.
“Related California is being creative in their approach to this project, particularly in the way they are proposing to provide public infrastructure with both affordable housing funding and a new state of the art turnkey fire station,” Taupier said. “This is exactly the kind of development that sends a signal that San Francisco is back and we are solidly on our path of transforming Downtown into a 24/7 mixed-use neighborhood.”
Related California says it has completed more than 20,700 residences in the state, and it has more than 4,600 affordable and 7,200 market-rate units in predevelopment.
The company has long roots in San Francisco. William Witte, the company’s chairman and CEO, was deputy mayor for housing and neighborhoods under former Mayor Art Agnos, as well as director of housing and economic development under ex-Mayor Dianne Feinstein. He was also an appointed San Francisco Housing Authority commissioner.
The company on one page of its website lists 17 San Francisco projects going back nearly 30 years that include luxury condominium and affordable-housing developments built in partnership with nonprofit developers.
Related California is also partnering with various city agencies and Mercy Housing on the redevelopment of The City’s Sunnydale-Velasco area, an effort that will ultimately construct 1,700 new residential units, including 775 replacement public-housing units, another 200 affordable units and up to 700 market-rate units.
Last October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom also announced that Related California and the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation had been chosen to build about 372 homes with a range of affordability levels on the site of the state Department of Motor Vehicles office at 1377 Fell St. That project is currently in the planning stage.
