What started as a proposed 309-unit condo tower at Market and Oak Streets, and was turned into a proposed 460 rental units at the same location, will now perhaps be zero units, as the developer has surrendered the property to their lending bank.
The good news is that the All Star Cafe donut shop at Oak and Market Streets appears to have just bought a few more years of life. The bad news is that the 460 housing units that were supposed to replace it now appear to be very much doomed, as the SF Business Times reports that the long-proposed One Oak apartment tower has surrendered the site to its banking lender, amidst a reported $44 million in outstanding debt.
“Build Inc. has surrendered the stalled One Oak project site to its lender, the latest chapter in the saga of the 40-story residential tower long planned to rise in San Francisco’s Hub District,” the Business Times reports. “A deed-in-lieu of foreclosure was recorded for the property last month, public records show, allowing the San Francisco-based developer to voluntarily turn it over to Washington Capital Management Inc.”
While the proposed tower has always been called One Oak, its address is technically 1500-1540 Market Street, at the intersection of Van Ness. At one early point, Getty Center architect Richard Meier was attached, and later, SFMOMA addition architects Snøhetta did the revised tower design.
Plans for this site have been all over the map since it was originally proposed as a 40-story condo tower. Amidst delays, the developer Build Inc tried to add 150 more units in 2021, but the following year submitted plans to instead make it a 460 rental unit apartment building.
The Business Times points out that “Build attempted to sell the site in 2018, a year after it was approved for redevelopment, amid rising construction costs and fees." Build originally purchased the parcels that make up the whole site in 2015, for around $40 million.
This developer Build Inc. is the same developer behind the controversially rejected 469 Stevenson project that hopes to turn a Nordstrom’s parking lot into a 27-story residential tower. New plans for that were submitted in December, but things may be, shall we say, in flux for that particular developer.
Image via SNØHETTA
