225 Bush St. — the Standard Oil Building.

J.K. Dineen
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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Downtown San Francisco is for sale. With values reaching, and in some cases surpassing, the peak reached in 2006, property owners are rushing to market with a wide range of building types.

Click the image to see a slideshow of S.F. buildings on the block.

Properties being offered include Hines 
 

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iconic 101 California St., which has never sold before and could reach $1 billion. There are historic buildings like 225 Bush St. and corporate headquarters properties like 50 Beale (Bechtel) and 550 Terry Francois Blvd. (the Gap)

The stream of pending deals will create a welcome cash flow into city coffers.

With two transfer tax increases passed over the past few years, San Francisco now has a 2.5 percent transfer tax for transactions over $5 million. If everything sells that is currently on the block, the city could raise $125 million.

That is a lot of DPW workers, teachers, social workers, police officers and park directors.

J.K. Dineen covers real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

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Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2012/07/take-a-tour-of-san-francisco-office.html

Looking toward downtown, Ms. Carpinelli has witnessed the advance of the shiny, boxlike structures of the Mission Bay biotechnology hub on her neighborhood.

Now the Port of San Francisco is embarking on an ambitious development plan for the massive Pier 70 that involves restoring the old shipyard buildings and constructing 2.5 million square feet of new office space.

But as San Francisco officials court tech companies for what they call the “innovation corridor,” extending from Mission Bay to Pier 70 and beyond, neighbors and urban planners are asking how the architectural sensibilities — or lack thereof — of Silicon Valley will weave themselves into the urban fabric.

“The suburban tech campuses, they seem to be designed by engineers and not architects,” said Ms. Carpinelli, a graphic designer who heads up the Dogpatch neighborhood association. “I think the pressure is on to come up with something interesting for Pier 70.”

The city has thrown in with Forest City Development California, the firm behind the Westfield Center mall and the continuing transformation of the San Francisco Chronicle building, to meet that challenge. Forest City was recently chosen to plan and develop a 25-acre chunk of the 65-acre Pier 70, and envisions “a new model of innovation campus” alongside the restored historic buildings and a waterfront park.

With construction starting in 2015 at the earliest, the plans are short on detail. But the concept is a place featuring a mix of tech companies and arts organizations, public places that encourage the intermingling of people and ideas, and building designs that draw on the industrial history of the neighborhood.

Alexa Arena, a local Forest City executive, said the key was to think “beyond the physical buildings” to the tenants who could bring the space to life. That includes allowing development on the site to occur more organically and less through heavy-handed, top-down planning. It also means designing buildings that interact with their surroundings. “It’s a development that’s contextual,” Ms. Arena said.

Although vague, the ideas appear to be aimed at avoiding what everyone, from city officials to neighbors, does not want: a repeat of Mission Bay. That 303-acre development, anchored by the new hospital and research complex of the University of California, San Francisco, stretches from ATT Park to the edge of Pier 70. Formerly an industrial railyard, Mission Bay grew up quickly over the last decade, with offices for biotech companies, parking structures and condos in the sanitized, suburban look and feel that dominates Silicon Valley.

While Mission Bay has been a success from a real estate and economic standpoint, its architectural style strikes many as out of place.

“It’s a great economic base and it’s great for San Francisco, but it doesn’t look like San Francisco,” said Lou Vasquez, a longtime San Francisco developer. “If the Bay Bridge wasn’t there, I’d completely lose my bearings.”

Indeed, tech-company architecture developed explicitly as a counterpoint to the urban-industrial fabric that San Francisco wants to preserve, said Alan Hess, a prominent California architecture critic.

“There are many good reasons why Hewlett Packard settled in suburbia,” said Mr. Hess, a California architecture critic. “It was a new concept of the factory with lawns and recreation areas, which was the exact opposite of the dirty, smelly factories with their belching smokestacks from the industrial era.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/us/14bcpier.html

Looking toward downtown, Ms. Carpinelli has witnessed the advance of the shiny, boxlike structures of the Mission Bay biotechnology hub on her neighborhood.

Now the Port of San Francisco is embarking on an ambitious development plan for the massive Pier 70 that involves restoring the old shipyard buildings and constructing 2.5 million square feet of new office space.

But as San Francisco officials court tech companies for what they call the “innovation corridor,” extending from Mission Bay to Pier 70 and beyond, neighbors and urban planners are asking how the architectural sensibilities — or lack thereof — of Silicon Valley will weave themselves into the urban fabric.

“The suburban tech campuses, they seem to be designed by engineers and not architects,” said Ms. Carpinelli, a graphic designer who heads up the Dogpatch neighborhood association. “I think the pressure is on to come up with something interesting for Pier 70.”

The city has thrown in with Forest City Development California, the firm behind the Westfield Center mall and the continuing transformation of the San Francisco Chronicle building, to meet that challenge. Forest City was recently chosen to plan and develop a 25-acre chunk of the 65-acre Pier 70, and envisions “a new model of innovation campus” alongside the restored historic buildings and a waterfront park.

With construction starting in 2015 at the earliest, the plans are short on detail. But the concept is a place featuring a mix of tech companies and arts organizations, public places that encourage the intermingling of people and ideas, and building designs that draw on the industrial history of the neighborhood.

Alexa Arena, a local Forest City executive, said the key was to think “beyond the physical buildings” to the tenants who could bring the space to life. That includes allowing development on the site to occur more organically and less through heavy-handed, top-down planning. It also means designing buildings that interact with their surroundings. “It’s a development that’s contextual,” Ms. Arena said.

Although vague, the ideas appear to be aimed at avoiding what everyone, from city officials to neighbors, does not want: a repeat of Mission Bay. That 303-acre development, anchored by the new hospital and research complex of the University of California, San Francisco, stretches from ATT Park to the edge of Pier 70. Formerly an industrial railyard, Mission Bay grew up quickly over the last decade, with offices for biotech companies, parking structures and condos in the sanitized, suburban look and feel that dominates Silicon Valley.

While Mission Bay has been a success from a real estate and economic standpoint, its architectural style strikes many as out of place.

“It’s a great economic base and it’s great for San Francisco, but it doesn’t look like San Francisco,” said Lou Vasquez, a longtime San Francisco developer. “If the Bay Bridge wasn’t there, I’d completely lose my bearings.”

Indeed, tech-company architecture developed explicitly as a counterpoint to the urban-industrial fabric that San Francisco wants to preserve, said Alan Hess, a prominent California architecture critic.

“There are many good reasons why Hewlett Packard settled in suburbia,” said Mr. Hess, a California architecture critic. “It was a new concept of the factory with lawns and recreation areas, which was the exact opposite of the dirty, smelly factories with their belching smokestacks from the industrial era.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/us/14bcpier.html