The plans for a 427,000-square-foot “innovation campus” to be constructed across 3.3 acres at 100 Hooper Street, with three four-story buildings rising up to 58-feet in height on the site which is currently home to the San Francisco Mini Storage and truck rental business, could be approved by San Francisco’s Planning Commission in two weeks time.
As proposed, the new campus would include 285,000 square feet of office space, around 135,000 square feet of space for Production, Distribution and Repair (PDR), and a series of outdoor courtyards.
The paperwork for the building permits has already been filed. And if the $60 million development is approved, the 100 Hooper Street campus should be online in 2018. Ground-floor restaurant and retail spaces, and parking for around 100 cars, are part of the plans as well.
Rockwood Capital paid roughly $4 million an acre for the Showplace Square site which is bounded by Channel Street to the north, 7th street the east, Hooper Street to the south, and the California College of the Arts (CCA) campus to the west.
UPDATE: Designs for proposed ‘Hundred Hooper’ innovation campus revealed.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The zoning specifically prohibits office use yet office use is clearly the primary proposed use for the site.
SEC. 210.10. PDR-1-G DISTRICT: GENERAL. The intention of this district is to retain and encourage existing production, distribution, and repair activities and promote new business formation. Thus, this district prohibits residential and office uses and limits retail and institutional uses. Additionally, this district allows for more intensive production, distribution, and repair activities than PDR-1-B and PDR-1-D but less intensive than PDR-2. Generally, all other uses are permitted. In considering any new land use not contemplated in this District, the Zoning Administrator shall take into account the intent of this District as expressed in this Section and in the General Plan.
Actually, if you read the planning code further (I don’t have it in front of me and cannot reference the exact section), this neighborhood and zoning allows PDR to be as little as 1/3rd of the project. And it looks like this project is meeting that mark pretty much exactly, from the numbers listed. So it shouldn’t be a zoning issue at all. My guess is that planning will be eager to to approve this project, given the relative dearth of (and high need for) high quality design and production spaces such as these.