Salesforce Tower Tops ‘Em All in San Francisco

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Salesforce Tower, San Francisco

San Francisco—Construction of the 1.4 million-square-foot Salesforce Tower in San Francisco’s booming Transbay District is more than a year from completion but already, the future headquarters of cloud computing company Salesforce has earned a major distinction. Project developers Boston Properties Inc. and Hines revealed that the 61-story office high-rise has been officially designated the tallest building in San Francisco.

Designed by architectural firms Pelli Clarke Pelli and Kendall Heaton, the $1 billion Salesforce Tower hit the 867-foot mark Friday, Oct. 14, knocking the 853-foot tall Transamerica Pyramid out of its long-held position as the city’s tallest building. And the height difference between the two structures is set to increase. General contractors Clark Construction and Hathaway Dinwiddie are still hard at work and will ultimately take the office skyscraper at 415 Mission St. to 1,070 feet, at which point it will take on the title of the tallest office building west of Chicago.

Salesforce Tower’s local milestone comes three years after Boston Properties and Hines held a ceremonial ground breaking in acknowledgement of their closing on the $192 million acquisition of the 50,000-square-foot project site. A year later in 2014, the partners landed Salesforce as the anchor tenant in a 714,000-square-foot deal that marked the largest office lease in San Francisco history.

The cutting-edge office destination will have more to offer than titles. Salesforce Tower will be a LEED Platinum-certified property also featuring 7,000 square feet of retail space, a portion of which will be located on the fifth floor, opening onto the $6 billion Transbay Transit Center’s 5.4-acre rooftop park. Commercial real estate services firm CBRE is spearheading leasing activity and has secured commitments from Bain & Co. and Vy Capital, which have signed on for 70,000 square feet and 19,000 square feet, respectively.

Next up at Salesforce Tower is the topping off of core walls, which is expected to occur in November, followed by the topping of structural steel in March 2017. The first tenants are on track to move into the building in the fourth quarter of 2017.