San Francisco's Long-Awaited Parcel F Seeks Final Approvals

About a month after securing another key vote, Parcel F, a 61-story, mixed-use tower by Hines and Urban Pacific Development, will go before the San Francisco Planning Commission on Thursday for final approvals. 

The last major project planned for San Francisco's Transbay area, Parcel F has had all 274K SF of its rentable office space spoken for by Salesforce since 2018.

The 800-foot tower's designs call for 165 homes, 79K SF of amenity space and 189 hotel rooms, along with 9K SF of ground-floor retail.

As other big Transbay sites opened or at least broke ground during the last decade, Parcel F stayed stuck in early planning stages, most notably after developer Crescent Heights pulled out of a deal to buy and build on the city-owned land in 2015.

Since Hines, Urban Pacific and an affiliate of Goldman Sachs bought the site in 2016, it has had to compete with other projects for the finite office development allowed every year by Prop M. 

Along with items like conditional use authorization (for its hotel component) and entitlements, planning commissioners will vote on confirmation of the city's shadow study.

The city found that the shadows cast on Union Square Plaza and Willie "Woo Woo" Wong Playground are within legal limits. While Chinatown activists disputed those limits late last year at a planning commission hearing, the development team expects full support at Thursday's vote, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. 

Hines and Urban Pacific Development are also working on Block 4, a 47-story Transbay high-rise expected to have over 500 units. The developers expect Block 4's 340 or so affordable units to satisfy the 40% affordability requirement unique to the Transbay area. 

When complete, the Parcel F tower will be San Francisco's fifth-tallest, and will feature a pedestrian bridge connecting it to Salesforce Park.