30 Van Ness Avenue

While the sale of the City’s five-story building at 30 Van Ness Avenue, a building which sits upon a parcel which is zoned for development up to 400 feet in height, was authorized for sale by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors with a price of “no less than $87 million,” the negotiated sale price for the parcel is $80 million, according to the purchase and sale agreement between the City and 30 Van Ness Holdings, LLC (Related California).

The outstanding debt on the building is around $31,800,000. And after paying $400,000 in broker commissions and $40,000 in marketing costs, the City should receive around $47,700,000 in net proceeds which will help finance the City’s proposed development of a new 17-story building at 1500 Mission Street, on the eastern half of the Goodwill site at the intersection of Mission and South Van Ness Avenue.

The sale of 30 Van Ness was structured with a leaseback to the City until late 2018. And while the City’s existing Surplus City Land Ordinance designates that all proceeds from the sale of surplus City property be used to finance affordable housing in San Francisco, a carve-out for the sale of 30 Van Ness Avenue was approved by the Board of Supervisors.

Plans for around 600 units of housing are expected for the 30 Van Ness site, the conceptual renderings for which were included in those aforementioned marketing fees.

30 Van Ness Concept Rendering

26 thoughts on “City’s Mid-Market Tower Site to Fetch $7M Less than Authorized”
  1. This rendering makes it look like the remainder of the lot just to the east is a would-be park / plaza. Actually kind of an amazing spot / idea (though, undoubtedly not ideal).

  2. 1. Whew. That’s twice today that I’ve been relieved to see that a render is just a “placeholder”.

    2. How did they just ignore the authorization terms from the BoS?

  3. That’s probably one of the ugliest intersections in SF. The lower floors and street level of the rendering are worse than what is existing.

  4. SF is being crushed by tall mediocre buildings such as this. How does it even relate to the surroundings ones – 100 Van Ness (which was an improvement) and particularly, the beautiful Beaux Arts building opposite. Doesn’t context ie, how the buidling interacts with the surroundings ones mean anything??

    1. I will agree with you on this. There are countless styles that can be revived (and not to mention were originally revivals themselves!): Beaux Arts, Art Deco, Greek Revival, Classical Revival, and many others. It seems like the only “revival” we are getting is a rehash of mid-century.

  5. A) it’s a random rendering

    B) I actually like it, anyway

    C) nice to see people ignoring the real substance here, which is the city getting $7M less than the “minimum” price authorized by the BOS. Is that because the market’s peaked? (maybe, but probably not yet) Is it because the city’s negotiators had no idea what they were doing? (probably; we’ve seen plenty of examples on here where the city overspends and underachieves as compared to what a private actor would do.)

    And what does it mean for the sale, since presumably it has to go back to the BOS (now new and devolved by a Peskin)

  6. Why is it that Eastern SOMA actually has some nice architecture and the city keeps dumping all the architectural crap on to the west side of SOMA?

  7. Curious why you would want the tech bubble to burst! That will not help you buy a home and will help our local economy.

    Change is progress and change is good. Embrace that this is the new normal.

  8. The headline here seems to imply that the city was desperate in a downturning economy.

    According to this Chronicle article, it sounds like the city got a pretty good deal despite better offers. Bigger commitment to affordable housing by the developer, and below market rate lease for the next three years while the new city office space is build out.

  9. One point that got cut from the story is that the city considers the “net yield” on the deal to be $90 million: $80 million sales prices, $2 million for transfer tax, and $8 million for 15 additional affordable units above the 12 percent.

  10. Are you the journalist who wrote the article? Thank you for the clarification.

    This is good information the put a price tag on affordable unit. $8 million for 15 units turns out to be $533k subside per unit. The ratio of affordable housing is 33%, or 2-to-1 between market rate and BMR. For the buyer of market rate housing, the are paying for their own house as well as 50% of other people’s affordable unit. The premium is $267k. This premium maybe split between the buyer and the developer.

    I am not against subsidized housing. Just trying to make the number more transparent. Someone pays to subsidize BMR unit owner. It is good to know how this work out.

  11. Exactly. This formula works perfectly at allowing only the poor and the rich to live in the city while banning the working class. It’s a formula that has failed for twenty years and will continue polarizing the city.

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