Architecture firms aim to add pizazz to plaza

A nine-member jury has selected two winning designs for a spruce-up of Harvey Milk Plaza, San Francisco’s plain-vanilla Municipal Railway stop.

Christian Werthmann of Peter Walker Partners in Berkeley and Heidi Sokolowsky of John Winder Architects in San Francisco won the San Francisco Prize. Each will receive $3,500.

Werthmann’s design incorporated mist emitters to create lighting effects in response to fog and other weather conditions. The key element of Sokolowsky’s design was an electronic billboard for public announcements.

Three finalists were also named and will each receive $1,000. The prize committee received 112 submissions, which were on display at the Civic Auditorium from Sept. 6 to 8.

Most of the submissions were excellent, said Jill Manton, director of public art for the San Francisco Arts Commission.

The commission, the San Francisco Department of Public Works and the San Francisco Prize Coalition administer the award.

“It was obvious that a lot of time, effort and thought went into dealing with this complex urban design issue,” Manton said.

This year’s contest was more difficult than in previous years because designers had to address such concerns as traffic congestion and the entrance to Muni.

A public forum on the winning entries will take place in November. The designs and public feedback will then be submitted to Mayor Willie Brown and the Board of Supervisors who will decide what step to take next.

Although no money has been set aside in the city budget to implement the winning plan, the winners of past San Francisco Prize contests have seen their designs implemented.

New assignments

? Swinerton & Walberg Builders was selected by Higgens Development to build 524 Howard St., a new office tower in San Francisco’s South of Market area.
? NBBJ, a San Francisco architectural firm, has been hired to design Hearst Memorial Mining Building at the University of California at Berkeley. The $46.5 million project includ es historic preservation and new laboratories for the campus building.
? Ottolini Booth & Associates Architects of San Francisco has completed its renovation of 114 Sansome St. The firm’s architects dug up drawings and other historical documents at UC Berkeley to aid them in their restoration of the 1920s building. Michael H. Casey Design worked on fabricating urns, ceilings and vaulted archways for the building.

Houston’s Hines scoots in under Prop. M cap

Developer Hines plans to scoop up 535 Mission St., one of the last fully entitled development sites in San Francisco, according to sources close to the deal.

The 16,000-square-foot site, on Mission between First and Second streets, is slated for a 24-story, 250,000-square-foot office highrise.

The seller of 535 Mission is New York-based Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, which purchased the property in 1998.

Blackstone officials declined comment through their media relations firm. Hines Executive Vice President Jim Buie also declined comment.

Local real estate experts say the land could trade for as high as $40 million. Blackstone paid around $13 million for the site , according to research by a local real estate brokerage.

The most recent price for fully entitled downtown parcel was around $18 million, paid for the 524 Howard St. site in May, according to the brokerage firm.
Other downtown building sites have traded for between $22 million and $32 million in the past two years, including TishmanSpeyer’s 555 Mission, Myers’ 55 Second (formerly known as One Second) and Hines’ 560 Mission, according to the brokerage firm.
But the price for 535 Mission could set a record for a downtown land sale, given San Francisco’s current development climate.
Proposition M, a voter initiative passed in 1986, restricts annual development for larger projects to 875,000 square feet, meaning developers must compete for the right to build. Since 535 Mission is entitled, Hines could start development right away.
Investor Greg Flynn of Flynn Land Co. said any developer would be happy to own the site.
“It’s a superb location, and the fact that it’s entitled makes it viable to be developed in the short time; otherwise, you need a staying power of indefinite depth,” Flynn said.
The failure on Nov. 7 of both Propositions L and K, which would have provided that more commercial space be developed by excluding government and other projects from the growth cap, makes the 535 Mission site worth even more, Flynn said.

“I don’t know what it’s worth, but whatever it was worth before the election, it’s now worth something greater than that.”

Houston-based Hines has been an active player in the San Francisco real estate market over the past two years.

Most recently, Hines and partner California Public Employees’ Retirement System, purchased 50 Fremont St.

Hines is also the owner of 560 Mission St., which was leased to Chase H&Q in what was at the time the largest lease deal in San Francisco history.

Hines and CalPERS have together purchased other Bay Area buildings over the past two years, including 505 Montgomery St. in San Francisco and Redwood Technology Centre in Redwood Shores.

The company is also a partial owner of 601 California in San Francisco.
At the same time, Hines is selling non-strategic assets in the Bay Area. The company sold 343 Sansome in downtown San Francisco on Nov. 16 and is trying to sell a portfolio of South San Francisco properties.

One of the buildings has closed escrow, one is under negotiations, and another has been pulled off the market until next year, according to listing agent Gary Willard of CB Richard Ellis Inc.

When will the city’s office market return?

The next generation of office towers could arrive sooner than you might think

The gritty, boarded up, low-rise building at 555 Mission St. doesn’t look like a herald for the next generation of San Francisco office development, but it could be.

Tacked on the fa�ade is a grandiose architectural rendering of a 547,000-square-foot office building already entitled for the site, awaiting a company to make a new home there. It’s among the first signs that the next round of new office buildings may be coming sooner than you think.

In the depths of the real estate depression following the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001, many were predicting no new office building construction in San Francisco this decade. Now some are speculating that the next wave of commercial office highrises could start construction as early as 2006, provided the nascent recovery the city is experiencing speeds up in the second half of 2004 and gains momentum throughout 2005.

With a vacancy rate of 20 percent and an estimated 14 million square feet of Class A and B space still on the market, such optimism is anything but a consensus. There is, however, agreement on which sites are likely to stir first when the office development market emerges from its slumber.

The first new multi-tenant corporate high-rises will likely come at Shorenstein’s 350 Bush St., or at 555 Mission St., where Tishman Speyer has already started marketing efforts to find an anchor tenant. Both projects have gained San Francisco planning approvals and are awaiting anchor tenants. They are at least two-and-a-half years ahead of any competitive buildings, given the city’s three- to four-year approval process.

Crunch hits downtown S.F. landowner

California Mortgage and Realty President David Choo is selling off nine properties, including two downtown development sites, in a bid to save his struggling private mortgage company.

In a July 23 Securities Exchange Commission filing, CMR details “cash flow problems” stemming from the fact that 84 percent of the private lender’s borrowers in its second fund are delinquent on payments. In the filing, Choo said $5 million of the profits generated from the real estate sales would pay CMR’s debts and obligations; another $1.5 million would be set aside for the company’s overhead and operating costs.

The properties listed for sale includ e an office tower development site at 524 Howard St.; a two-family building in Pacific Heights; a condo at the St. Regis; houses in Piedmont and St. Helena; a condo in New York; and the seven-parcel assemblage at First and Mission where Choo and development partner Solit Interests Group had sought approvals to build six razor-thin 1,000-plus-foot towers designed by celebrity architect Renzo Piano. The First and Mission property was recently assessed at $140 million. CMR CEO James Gala said that three properties, one in the South Bay, one in Las Vegas, and one in San Francisco, are in contract to be sold. The loan balance owed on these properties is not known.

“We expect that these sales will provide the balance of the capital needed to meet these obligations,” Gala said in a written statement.

Selling real estate he owns by himself or with other investors is just the latest of a series of measures Choo has taken to help CMR weather the financial markets’ turmoil. He voluntarily deferred or waived over $3 million in servicing and asset management fees over the past 18 months; he took over $1.5 million of fund obligations onto his own books; he bought approximately $18 million of defaulted loans and foreclosed properties from CMR’s funds.

The actions “bolster our cash resources and improve the likelihood of our continuing operations through 2008,” according to SEC documents.