Transbay Tower Construction

With its massive 14-foot thick concrete foundation having been cured and its basement levels constructed, the future Salesforce Tower and tallest building in San Francisco is now rising above ground.

The 61-story tower will reach a height of 1,070-feet over the next two years.

Transbay Tower Rendering

Salesforce, which is paying $560 million for its 15-1/2 year lease of the tower’s bottom 30 floors, the 61st floor and the (Transbay) tower’s naming rights, is slated to start its move into the vertical campus at 415 Mission Street in early 2018.

37 thoughts on “Salesforce Tower Above Ground: Two Years and 1,070 Feet to Go”
  1. If only all of SoMa resembled this block (all the way down to 11th street). We would have another 4,000-5,000 units of housing. All in an area that is accessible via freeways and public transit all while putting less housing pressure on districts like the Mission.

  2. I’m still day-dreaming about them pulling a Chrysler Tower on the Korean Air building in L.A., and slipping a few extra feet onto this building.

        1. I’m waiting for the day when the general public understands the relationship between growth and profitability in enterprise SaaS revenue models. Hint: cohort profit occurs over time as annual recurring revenue overcomes cost of acquisition and servicing. Continual growth therefore equals loss when you ignore cohorts.

          1. Sounds a lot like the “sticky eyeballs” and “first mover” arguments of yore when we were told that in “the new paradigm” of 1999, profits don’t matter. Personally, I like companies with a strong balance sheet and income statement and a wide moat (but I’m stuck in my ways).

          2. OTOH, that is a nice looking tower (which, I predict, will become known as the “Google Tower” or the “Microsoft Tower” one day).

          3. “cohort profit occurs over time as annual recurring revenue overcomes cost of acquisition and servicing”

            That’s the goal but not always the case.

            A cohort worth $100M in projected revenue is awesome. Until you realize the cost of acquisition, servicing and share of overhead was even more…

          4. @Michael, not to continue taking this thread down a different path (but I guess I am), but I would hope the salesperson/team would have pulled together some type of ROI to know going in if the $100M revenue would generate profit. If not, I’d expect that salesforce would have to deem this customer “strategic” (however they’d like to define that) to the overall business or the deal wouldn’t get done.

        2. Yes, I too wish that corporations would start caring more about quarterly profits and less about investing in themselves for the long term. Short term thinking is much, much better.

    1. It could be done incredibly easily. The transparent screen could be extended 50 feet more since it would cast no shadows. The Transbay plan allows for spires and crowns to reach higher than the one currently proposed, so wouldn’t require much in the way of legislation.

    2. the site is entitled up to 1200 feet, I think they only reason they reduced to 1070 was for cost, so they could go higher if they wanted to and could come up with the money – especially if the extra height is just ornamental (as the currently planned top 150 feet already is)

      1. Site is entitled to 1000′ to roof and Transbay plan allows for 200′ additional crown/ spire. Current plans are 912′ to the roof.

    3. Yeah they could even do something simple like putting a 100 ft spire on top sticking out of the crown. That would be pretty cool actually.

    4. Technically, we can always say it’s the tallest tower west of Chicago to the top floor. The LA tower is only taller because of the spire.

    1. Agreed. People live in the Mission because they like the neighborhood. Not because there aren’t more soulless skyscrapers to move into.

  3. Fungible?

    Glad building starting to rise. Will be fun to watch from our Alamo Square balcony.

    Will there ever be a taller building? Where?

  4. I wouldn’t generalize that “people live in the Mission because they like the neighborhood.” I bought in the Mission decades ago because it was what I could afford at the time.

    I would absolutely LOVE a cluster of high rises around the 16th St and 24th St BART stations. That is why, after all, those locations were chosen for stations. There is enormous potential all along the Mission St and 16th St corridors, and between Mission and Potrero, at least. Not that this will happen…many of the people who killed the station area development in the ’60s are still around…and wondering why a studio in the Mission is $3k/mo

    1. For 714,000 sqft it would come out to 75$/ft, with naming right in what is arguably the best class A office location in the city, and throw naming rights for the price, that’s arguably a bargain.

  5. Salesforce has generated a cumulative net loss since inception. What a joke. I personally have made infinitely more profit selling things on eBay than Salesforce has ever made.

    1. Unlike mere mortal persons, corporate persons like Salesforce don’t have to live off profit. They can sell stock and float bonds. The apogee of a modern corporation is to enrich the stockholders and execs while leaving nothing but the smile for the government tax collectors.

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