Transit Center Tower Rendering

At the center of the 145 acre Transit Center District, the proposed Transit Tower to be on Mission between First and Freemont will rise 920 feet to its roof and 1,070 feet including its sculptural element, becoming the City’s tallest structure (1,000 feet to the highest enclosed space) and yielding 1.3 million square feet of office and 16,500 square feet of retail.

Currently zoned for heights ranging from 30 to 550 feet, as plugged-in people know, in addition to the the Transit Tower the Transit Center District Plan would allow for an additional six buildings to rise over 550 feet and up to 850 feet on First bewteen Stevenson and Elm Alley.

Transit Center Height Table

23 thoughts on “The Plan For San Francisco’s Tallest Tower And Transit Center District”
  1. I read through the EIR, the real issue here is going to be shadows. Basically almost all of the construction planned for the area will shade some portions of public parks to some small degree. I believe the never shade parks ever rules we have are extremely specific on this – so its going to be a big issue going forward.

  2. Big deal – this ain’t Waikiki. Not like the area would otherwise be bathed in resplendent sunlight year-round, allowing Soma residents to bask in Sol’s warming glow. Let’s manhattanize already.

  3. “Basically almost all of the construction planned for the area will shade some portions of public parks to some small degree.”
    What public parks? The ones that don’t exist yet and we’re only getting as a result of this project?
    The bigger issue here is how bullish you’d need to be on an economic turn to feel your leasing prospects would justify this much space.

  4. Union sq, justin herman plaza, st marys sq – thats not even all of them.
    Trust me, this will be the thing that cuts all of the towers by 200′

  5. Union Square is over 3000 feet away. Justin Herman Plaza and St. Mary’s Square are to the north. I don’t think shading will be an issue for any of these.

  6. Parks to the north are exactly the issue, as the sun shines from the south and casts shadows to the north. But if they can bend the rules enough to allow a 1000′ tower in a 30′ zone (!) they might grant an exception to the shadows too.

  7. Oh, yes, you’re right. But both parks are 1/2 mile away. How much shading will happen in each from a 1000 foot tower?

  8. “what, everybody’s got to have a freedom tower now?”
    BTW, I enjoyed this one, EH. Modernqueen/noearch is as shrill and humorless as ever.

  9. The city needs to step it up on this whole shadow situation. I say we ban clouds and fog asap! I’m sick of those thing needlessly blocking the sun. Of course if we ban clouds, we’d have to kick out salesforce as well; but that would crush SF real estate. 🙂

  10. I really dont know what part of “I read the EIR and shadows are specifically going to be a problem for parks”
    let me be more clear:
    Under almost all of the development scenarios, other than no development, some degree of shadow will fall on shadow protected SF parks. They did the studies, and the percentages are listed in the EIR. A 1k ft tower in the location proposed will cause some shading of union sq and some time of day during some time of year.
    This is like saying GW2 was just elected mayor of SF.

  11. Parks to the north are exactly the issue, as the sun shines from the south and casts shadows to the north. But if they can bend the rules enough to allow a 1000′ tower in a 30′ zone (!) they might grant an exception to the shadows too.”
    Its like these rules are handing down from God to Moses on tablets
    Oh lord this is only a 30 ‘ zone!

  12. I just hope we get the transit with this.
    “world class” transit centers usually have…… trains that move people intercity and further
    At the risk of beating a dead horse it sure would be nice to have a Geary subway planned into this rather than the central subway pig

  13. This super tower will be the economic and architectural anchor for further downtown growth and prosperity.
    Hopefully more of the smaller towers will also get built. Good for SF. Good for business. Another great design by Cesar Pelli.

  14. Let us not forget that this is the City that almost blocked a project south of the transbay terminal because it will shadow the unbuilt and un-prop k protected park proposed to be on top of the terminal. A terminal, by the way, who’s very raison d’etre is to deliver people to the center of our growing City because the recently demolished terminal would have been insufficient to do so under the City’s growth projections (which, btw (the growth projections themselves that is )include proposed buildings south of the terminal. Though, for anyone that has been around a few years, this level of retardery at the Supes is nothing new….
    As much as I’d love to see a thousand foot tower, the fact is that the voters will have to undo Prop K to make this plan happen. I can’t imagine San Francisco voters checking a box that allows shadows on parks.

  15. Aside from shadows, is there really sufficient commerical demand to warrant building so much office space?
    I wonder if it would be like the empire state building with significant vacancy rates and losing money for the first 20 years of operation.

  16. anon, the answer is “no, there is not sufficient commerical demand to warrant building so much office space.” Now or for the immediately forseeable future.
    However, there probably will be further out in the future.
    If there isn’t sufficient demand for commercial space in the further-out future for the capacity that this building provides, ever, then we’ll REALLY have problems and the fact that this building will have vacancies will be the least of them.

  17. Sad to see the building was cut 200′ from it’s originally proposed 1200′ base to crown height. It definitely shows in this more squat rendering. I do not like the look of this tower- it’s too fat. Crossing my fingers that the design will be refined further.

  18. This looks so similar to the tower Pelli did in Hong Kong and is slated to do elsewhere. If this is to be the city’s iconic tower I’d prefer it to be a little more… Iconic.

  19. Only in SF would we kill economic engines because they might shade a concrete plaza that just happens to be owned by the Parks Dept.

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