45 Lansing Rendering 2011

As we first reported with respect to the 39-story tower to rise at 45 Lansing last year:

Having purchased the plot of land at 45 Lansing from Turnberry which had entitled and targeted the parcel for 227 uberluxury housing units, this afternoon San Francisco’s Planning Commission will review the new developer’s proposal for increasing the number of units in the building to 320.

While the building height would remain the same at 400 feet, the number of studios would increase from 3 to 99, one-bedrooms would drop from 111 to 93, two-bedrooms would increase from 77 to 128, and all 36 three-bedrooms would be eliminated. Average unit size would fall from 1,225 to 915 square feet.

As re-proposed, the number of parking spaces for cars would increase from 227 to 265 while spots for bicycles would be bumped from 69 to 93. And with respect to the butterflies, the Pollinator Garden will be maintained until start of building construction, as early as the end of this year.

The Planning Commission approved the requested increase to 320 units and 265 mechanically-accessed parking spaces onsite. And while construction has yet to break ground, the building permit for the 400-foot tower has been approved and issued.

45 Lansing Night Rendering

26 thoughts on “Permit Issued For 39 Stories And 320 Condos At 45 Lansing To Rise”
  1. Pretty stubby at 400′ – why not go for an increase to a respectable 600-650′?
    No idea why we’re building such short buildings in the one area of the region where tall buildings have the infrastructure needed to support them already in place.

  2. Any new renderings, or is this the current design?
    [Editor’s Note: The renderings above represent the approved/current design.]

  3. What is a typical breakdown of financing for a project this large? Some earlier SS notes quoted the total construction cost around 275-300mm
    Can anyone offer an informed guess as to the % of the cost financed by:
    Developer Equity (new money above the land acquisition cost and entitlement/planning/building permits)
    New Construction Loan (?)
    Mezzanine debt(?)
    Thanks for any estimates.
    It seems like if I am in charge of institutional construction lending at some financial institution, building new condos in San Francisco in 2013 doesn’t seem like a horrible choice…

  4. @anon – although the infrastructure may be in place for a taller building, the economics may not be. A project has to pencil out in order to get the funding in place to build it.

  5. @Patrick – I’m going to go ahead and guess that the approved height here is what is the driving factor behind an exactly 400′ tall tower almost directly across the street from a much larger tower under construction. Just a hunch.

  6. Dare I say this post bears the mark of “SocketSpeak?” Like this:
    “Having written the blurb of words at Socket Site, which acts entitled and targets the uber luxury housing unit buyer, this afternoon San Francisco’s Planning Commission’s online PR tool reviewed yet another developer’s proposal for increasing the number of units in the City under cover of “smart growth.”
    And so tools begat tools.

  7. “all 36 three-bedrooms would be eliminated”. Ugh. As I’ve said before, this city builds seems to mainly build cubbies — transitional housing for passers-through, tech, whatever — a loss for families who want to raise kids here. Hello Pleasant and Mill Valley. I guess a family buying in could combine units, but this would seem to be an exception and barrier.
    Stucco_Sux — whaaat?

  8. Invented,
    Someone who can afford a 3BR in this tower can probably afford a SFH in Potrero or Bernal Heights. And their kids will have some green around them. No need to move to the burbs.
    I never understood how families who can afford a house with a garden in the City would lock their kids in places with no elbow room. They’ll take their kids out to stretch out just like you’d take you dog out to the dog park. I totally understand why you’d do it out of necessity but if that’s not the case, choosing that option seems very selfish. and immature.

  9. Some people consider Bernal the burbs.
    Kids get way more exercise at a park than a small backyard. Having a tiny SF yard doesn’t mean you are doing anything good for your kids.
    There’s tons of families all over the country (and world) that live in apartments with no yards whatsoever and still manage to raise healthy well adjusted kids. And there’s tons of families that have big yards and still raise tubby low activity kids. Raising good kids is about the parent, not the size of the yard.

  10. “I never understood how families who can afford a house with a garden in the City would lock their kids in places with no elbow room. They’ll take their kids out to stretch out just like you’d take you dog out to the dog park. I totally understand why you’d do it out of necessity but if that’s not the case, choosing that option seems very selfish. and immature.”
    lol: You surely can’t be serious. Millions of well adjusted kids (myself included) grew up in apartments. What does selfish and immature have to do with it? People make different choices…

  11. I thought this one had been redesigned to have a sloping leaf-shaped atrium roof… was that a different proposal?

  12. ” choosing that option seems very selfish. and immature.”
    Yikes, that’s me (as parent) then! Point well taken but really, who here isn’t quite close to recreation, amazing parks, and other urban amenities that offer our kids a vast & rich experience? I’m in a 3500sf flat, urban environment, and I do admit that it takes some extra work and funds to create the recreational balance. Ice hockey, circus arts, cycling — with a little work we’re everywhere! (and we are).

  13. “choosing that option seems very selfish. and immature.”
    A little judgmental maybe? I grew up with lots of open space, and spent my playtime in woods, fields and streams – but I have friends who grew up in apartments in Manhattan and seem they seem to have turned out fine to me (they even enjoy camping and hiking more than I do). Choosing to live in a high-rise apartment is just a lifestyle choice. How to raise well-adjusted kids is about good parenting. They’re not mutually exclusive.
    I don’t have kids, but that’s just my opinion.

  14. I am not criticizing parents who have kids in an apartments, simply the ones who have a viable SFH alternative in the same community. And SF has the priviledge of offering this choice. Less so in NY. With condos sold at around 1000/sf, a 3500sf flat like invented’s would buy him a nice big SFH in 90% of SF.

  15. The idea that for equivalent money the SFH is always better for the kids is utter hogwash.
    What is your possible reasoning for this? That condo HOAs are coming for the kids? SFH does not equal big yard, and even if it did…um, so? I lived in different houses growing up, and I loved the one with the park nearby, while hating the one with the biggest back yard.

  16. anon,
    You lived in a house, and didn’t have to take an elevator to go outside. I grew up in a house too and every night in the summer all the kids my age would meet for an improvised soccer game or just hanging out in the park or field close-by.
    In an apartment building, things are less natural, more staged. You have to be accompanied to roam the streets close-by and more often than not everything starts by getting into a car. Kids are kids. I am saddened at the lives of many kids today whose time is just a series of moving around to a never ending series of appointments.

  17. Even though selected lots in the area are allowed to go to 55 – 60 stories it seems developers are keeping their heights to 38 – 40 stories.The building at Mission and Main (I think) is going to be built to less than 25 stories when it could have been 40 stories or so.

  18. lol, we did exactly what you described – combined 2 studios in a downtown highrise to create a 2-bd place and had a kid. It was not easy and I would not recommend it to anyone. We are both architects and that helped when people at every stage of our project told us it could not be done.
    Before and during the combination we searched for a 2-bdrm east of Van Ness and north of Market that we could afford and could not find one. We searched for 2 years!
    Yes at the end of the day, we could have bought a SFH on the west or south side of the city instead of combining the units. Though, if we had done that our commute would have more than doubled on Muni and/or Bart instead of walking. I love that my son is a 20 minute walk from my office and I always arrive home having purged my work stress while walking home.
    I do find raising a child downtown challenging but he and his nanny loves our location and they make the best of it. We wish there was a park & rec center with pool wihin walking distance.
    We make a great effort leaving our 900SF apartment every weekend and enjoying this great city! My son might be the only person in the city that likes taking Muni – so many cool things and people to observe.
    I do agree with the other posters about this situation is a parenting choice. I just wish more 2-bdrm and bigger units were being created in the downtown. More units might mean more parents + kids downtown = more services and playmates for us.

  19. HK, great story and glad you stayed in SF. I agree with you that we need to have soem larger units in the downtown area as well and more people migth live there with their children.

  20. Does anyone have the latest stats regarding families in SF ? I remember a study from a few years ago that showed families with kids were leaving SF in droves. As parents me and my wife would have loved to life in the city but the schools were so lowly rated that we had no choice but to move out to the peninsula.

  21. ^That info’s easily found at census.org.
    SF has the lowest percentage of families of large cities in the US, though it isn’t really true that families are leaving in “droves” any more (nor was that ever really the case). It’s just been a long and slow decline in families as the city has become more and more expensive side-by-side with household sizes dropping (the expense phenomenon is largely to blame for this – families with a husband, wife, and kids have been slowly replaced by households with multiple breadwinners).

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