Forest City to Begin Work on SF’s Pier 70

By Keith Loria

San Francisco skyline

Forest City Realty Trust Inc. is set for the first phase of Pier 70, a 28-acre mixed-use project in San Francisco.

At full buildout, the project will consist of about 2,150 residential units, 30 percent of which will be affordable, up to 1.8 million square feet of commercial space and 450,000 square feet of retail, arts and light industrial/maker space. Additionally, it will include parks, transportation and infrastructure improvements and significant public benefits.

“We love to work with communities on transformative large urban mixed-use projects,” Jack Sylvan, Forest City’s senior vice president, told Commercial Property Executive. “Pier 70 offers an incomparable canvass of industrial history, the diverse culture of the Dogpatch neighborhood, and an expansive waterfront location, which makes this location extraordinarily unique.”

San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee signed into law an agreement that allows the development company to go further with plans, capping a decade of extensive planning, community outreach, civic engagement and collaboration. The project will include both new construction and adaptive reuse of historic structures and will open access to a part of San Francisco’s waterfront that has been underutilized and largely inaccessible for more than a century. Pier 70 will be part of a diverse, historic and creative neighborhood and will draw upon the neighborhood’s unique attributes and meld arts and creative spaces, housing across the spectrum of affordability, light manufacturing, local retail, new waterfront parks, and rehabilitated historic structures.

“San Francisco, the historic district and its waterfront location makes this one of the most incomparable development sites in the country,” Sylvan said. “We’re implementing the community’s vision is to create a place that’s a natural extension of the neighborhood. That means a vibrant waterfront, spaces to do creative things with the arts, design, manufacturing and food, community activities for everyone, and neighborhood services people use every day.”

Historic Transformation

According to Sylvan, the site is an historic industrial district that has been inaccessible to the public for more than 100 years.

“The project addresses the city’s needs for more housing, new urban parks, and space for artists, small-scale makers and other creative industries in ways that are reflective of the Dogpatch area,” he said. “We’re creating a unique new San Francisco neighborhood within an industrial historic district to support a diverse, thriving community of residents and workers.”

The city has seen a wealth of news on mixed-use developments in recent months. In May, FivePoint Holdings LLC launched commercial offerings at The San Francisco Shipyard, a nearly five-million-square-foot revitalized waterfront community; Earlier this year, the Bohannon Cos. received $145 million in financing to develop Menlo Gateway, an eight-story, 210,000-square-foot office building in Menlo Park; and Harvest Properties and LaSalle Investment Management teamed to acquire 1149 Chess Drive in Foster City from Whitney Investments and Woodstock Development for about $35.3 million last March.