Having just broken ground on the twin condo towers to rise at 201 Folsom Street (aka LUMINA) last month, yesterday Tishman Speyer closed escrow on the purchase of the parking lot at 100 Folsom Street and a couple of adjoining parcels across from the Infinity, a development site which is zoned for a 300-foot tower and could accommodate of up to 400 residential units according to the Business Times.
Tishman will need to acquire an adjacent city-owned parcel in order to proceed with the overall development, but according to Mike Grisso, senior project manager at San Francisco Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, “It has always been [the City’s] intention to negotiate a sale of our parcel to whomever owns the other three.”
I thought that parcel was part of the transbay redevelopment (block 1 I think).
That’s a nice location. I predict Tishman might want to get an exception higher than 300 ft because at that height, most of the views will be blocked off by the Gap building. Infinity units with city view facing north will not be happy.
Wow, Tishman’s on a roll.
Any thoughts on how this and 201 will affect Infinity resale values?
On the one hand the area is being further developed. This should be good, as empty parking lots don’t bring much charm to the neighborhood and often attract homeless.
On the other hand this means tons of new inventory hitting the area and, for some residents, blocked views.
My guess (and I admit I’m a non-expert so this is a guess more than anything): with rising interest rates and an explosion of condo inventory hitting South Beach, Infinity resale values will soften in the coming few years (or at least not continue to rise).
great question sfresident, let the speculating begin!!!
My guess is that condo values are going to start diverging in both directins. Units with special features such as 2 non-valet parking spots and permanent unobstructed views are pretty rare and will go up in value. But the units with 1 (or no) parking spot, valet parking, obstructed views, etc. are going to face a lot of competition.
All things being equal, a lot of people prefer to live in new units. That being said, new buildings have a lot of kinks to work out that can take years to resolve.
Anon, I was thinking similar thoughts. If you have an east facing protected water view at the Infinity, you’re in great shape.
But if you have a west facing view which is about to be blocked by the new 201 towers, it seems far from obvious this is great for you (though staring at an empty parking lot probably wasn’t too awesome either). Better to actually get in the new 201 unit with a less obstructed west facing view (as there would just be the 3 story loft building in front of you).
So yeah, devil will probably be in the details. There’s been a spike in Infinity prices over the last year. I don’t expect values to drop, but I imagine a bunch of construction equipment across the street won’t do much to encourage buyer frenzy.
Want a South Beach condo? – 1,000 units are now in the pipeline across the street from the Infinity alone. And there’s plenty of other projects in the neighborhood being built as well.
Differentiation is key. Whether it’s views, floor plan, etc. Interesting note about valet parking above. I don’t think it’ll hurt sales. ORH and Millenium did just fine. 201 Folsom (Lumina) will have valet parking and so will most of the large future developments in the area.
To answer the first commenter, yes this is part of Block 1, but Tishman only bought the privately-owned parts. The publicly-owned parcel is adjacent to the north, and still needs to be acquired.
I always wondered how this one was going to be developed since the public parcel wasn’t very useful without the private pieces. But it seems Tishman took care of that problem, so this one may get developed much sooner than expected.
So then Tishman would need to build affordable units onsite at the 100 Folsom location.
UPDATE: Award Winning Gang To Design SF Tower, Likely Folsom And Spear.