While plans for a new Mid-Market tower to rise on Nordstrom’s underdeveloped parking lot parcel at 469 Stevenson Street continue to move forward, it would appear as though the expected height of said tower has been reduced by 22 percent.

Originally envisioned to rise up to 366 feet in height, a recent set of elevations drafted by Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB) for the project team has the tower reaching a height of 284 feet, which is still 124 feet above the existing 160-foot height limit for the site and for which California’s Density Bonus law would need to be invoked.

At the same time, the unit count for the (squatter) tower has been increased from 454 to 468, the majority of which (74 percent) would be one-bedrooms, with parking for 234 cars, nearly 22,000 square feet of open space (including a new solarium and terrace atop the tower’s 14-foot-tall podium), and 5,500 square feet of ground floor retail space intended “to enliven” the development’s frontages along Stevenson and Jessie Streets.

We’ll keep you posted and plugged-in.

12 thoughts on “Less Height, More Density for Proposed Tower to Rise Right Here”
      1. That is crazy. I’d like to see the maximum be 0.25 spaces per unit. Or even better, a maximum of one space per 6 bedrooms, so as not to disincentivize family-sized apartments.

        The city can fit many more people and stay livable, but our streets can’t fit more cars.

  1. Why are we not allowed to go higher? Y not more Units? Isn’t there a housing shortage? This city is so dumb… or smart bc it doesn’t EVER want to solve this problem!

    1. Infill and upzoning in the lower-rise parts of the city matters orders of magnitude more than some extra height on a single downtown highrise.

      This project is still providing hundreds of units of housing where there are currently ZERO, and is adding more units than previously proposed.

      Shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

  2. Wow in NYC 800+ foot residential towers are a dime a dozen. My building alone has 800 units and is on a similar sized lot. Decades of chronic underbuilding in SF on sites like this is exactly why there is a housing crisis. In case you wondered if SF swill ever overcome its housing crisis – here is your answer. you want to fix the housing crisis? Demand every new building be at least 1000 feet and 1000 units.

      1. Which Prop K is that? Google reveals 0.5% transportation sales tax and legalizing prostitution. I’m assuming SF’s gone through all the letters many times over by now at the rate these things are proposed, yet the lingering consequences of dumb laws (or good ones) can last even longer than a few passes through the alphabet!

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