With its retail space having been cut in half last year, the San Francisco Business Times reports that the proposed development for the Port of San Francisco’s Seawall Lot 337/Pier 48 (a.k.a. Mission Rock or Giant’s parking lot A) is now scrambling for equity investors:
The San Francisco Giants are rushing to assemble a new team to redevelop 16 acres across from AT&T Park after the economic downturn prompted key equity investors in the project to pull out or scale back their involvement.
While the shake-up in the team on the $2 billion development is still in flux, Kenwood Investments will likely drop out of the project, while hedge fund Farallon Capital Management could opt out or play a much smaller financial role than originally planned, according to development and port sources.
Once again, a 17-year development cycle that was expected to start in 2013 and yield “875 housing units, 1 million square feet of office space, 240,000 square feet of shops and restaurants, 180,200 square feet of exhibit/event space, 8.7 acres of public open space and 2,650 parking spaces.”
∙ Batters out in San Francisco Giants’ $2B project [San Francisco Business Times]
∙ San Francisco SWL 337 Proposal: Downsized And Drawn Out [SocketSite]
∙ SocketSite Weekend Special: One Proposal For San Francisco SWL 337 [SocketSite]
If this project is looking for serious investors — not just placeholders on a show team – its going to be very hard.
When you strip away all the renderings – this is a very large market-rate housing and office project in its essence, and its going to be years before a single tower of either type gets financed – and probably way longer before this project gets any real traction.
The first office and residential towers that do happen, will get started in much better locations than “behind the ballpark”. Unless there is a ton of infrastructure investment first (who would pay for that??) , and/or a monster-size economic and real estate wave , this is really a B location.
All this project really needs now is someone wiling to spend $5 MIL or so to push it along for a few years thru design, redesign, approvals and controversy. Its a $5 MIL option.
Sounds like the project is on very shaky ground. Are the Giants rushing because they lose some kind of option unless they get serious funding.
Rushing? Problem here is the folks at the Port are smoking crack. They somehow think that by putting pressure on the Giants this is somehow going to materialize. The Port is broke and is looking to find sources of income and they think the Giants have deep pockets….smoke and mirrors…they better hope their tenants, the Giants, can pay the rent this year. Hey Monique put the crack pipe down…give the boyz a change to recover…your not going to get a better offer in this economy.
Put the Niner stadium there or build an arena so Ellison can buy the Warriors and move them there.
The reset button beckons
anon – I like the idea of a home for the Warriors. That would be
a good complement to the Giants ballpark and create a real draw
for the neighborhood financing. It’s also adjacent to mass transit.
As long as it can be as integrated architecturally as the Giants ballpark, it could be a nice addition and magnet for the area.