Oceanwide Center is a mixed-use

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ris ...

complex on hold in the

South of Market South of Market (SoMa) is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, situated just south of Market Street. It contains several sub-neighborhoods including South Beach, Yerba Buena, and Rincon Hill. SoMa is home to many of the city's museums ...

neighborhood of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, consisting of two towers.

Design

The taller tower, located at 50 First Street, is expected to rise and contain 34 stories () of office space below 19 floors with approximately 111 residential units. The base of the tower includes a six-story tall, outdoor "urban room" of public open space. The tower will feature diagonal, exterior bracing and taper towards the top, reminiscent of the John Hancock Center in Chicago. If completed as proposed, the tower would become San Francisco's second-tallest building after

Salesforce Tower Salesforce Tower, formerly known as Transbay Tower, is a 61-story skyscraper at 415 Mission Street, between First and Fremont Street, in the South of Market district of downtown San Francisco. Its main tenant is Salesforce, a cloud-based softwar ...

, surpassing the long time record-holder, the Transamerica Pyramid. The shorter tower, at 512

Mission Street Mission Street is a north-south arterial thoroughfare in Daly City and San Francisco, California that runs from Daly City's southern border to San Francisco's northeast waterfront. The street and San Francisco's Mission District through which it r ...

, is planned to climb and will contain the 169-room Waldorf Astoria San Francisco hotel on the first 21 floors and approximately 154 residential units on the upper 33 floors.

History

The parcels around 50 First Street were upzoned as part of the Transit Center District Plan approved in 2012 in conjunction with the new

Transbay Transit Center The Transbay Transit Center (officially the Salesforce Transit Center for sponsorship purposes) is a transit station in downtown San Francisco. It serves as the primary bus terminal — and potentially as a future rail terminal — for the San ...

. The parcels were originally assembled by developer David Choo and a plan was floated in 2007 for towers as tall as designed by

Renzo Piano Renzo Piano (; born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers, 1977), The Shard in London (2012), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (20 ...

. Choo was eventually forced to sell the property during the

2008 financial crisis 8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. In mathematics 8 is: * a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2. * a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of t ...

. In 2013, TMG Partners and Northwood Investors acquired the property out of bankruptcy court for . TMG and Northwood hired

Foster + Partners Foster + Partners is a British architectural, engineering, and integrated design practice founded in 1967 as Foster Associates by Norman Foster. It is the largest architectural firm in the UK with over 1,500 employees in 13 studios worldwide. ...

and

Heller Manus Architects Heller Manus Architects, founded in 1984, is a San Francisco, California-based architecture firm providing architectural, master planning, and urban design services for public and private sector clients. Jeffrey Heller, FAIA is the founding principa ...

to re-design the project. In 2015, Beijing-based Oceanwide Holdings acquired the property for US$296 million. A groundbreaking ceremony for the buildings was held on December 8, 2016. Construction on the shorter of the two towers was suspended in 2019 due to economic conditions. Subsequently, the construction on the second, taller tower was also halted in 2020 due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

and had not resumed construction as of June 2023.

External links

Oceanwide Center - Foster + Partners

References

{{Buildings in San Francisco, state=collapsed China Oceanwide Holdings Group Skyscrapers in San Francisco Residential condominiums in the United States South of Market, San Francisco Proposed skyscrapers in the United States

Design

History

See also

External links

References