Avant Housing and equity partner Essex Property Trust have been tapped to build a 400-foot tower on Block 9 in the Transbay District, a 563-unit project that could break ground a year from now.
The Successor Agency to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency picked Avant and Essex over finalists Related California and Vancouver-based Westbank Corp. The Avant/Essex team agreed to pay $43.32 million for the site, which works out to about $100,000 per door for the project’s 420 market-rate rental units. The project also includes 143 units of below-market-rate family units, which are being developed by Bridge Housing.
The decision was announced at the Transbay Citizen Advisory Committee meeting tonight.
The Avant/Essex bid was actually $180,000 less than the Related California offer, but $9 million more than the Westbrook bid. Avant Development Director Eric Tao said that the project will cost between $250 million and $300 million to build, depending on what happens to construction materials over the next year.
Block 9 is one of 11 parcels (a total of 12 acres) that were freed up when the Embarcadero Freeway was torn down. Proceeds from the sale of the properties to private developers will help pay for the Transbay Terminal, the $4.2 billion “Grand Central Station of the West” under construction at First and Mission streets.
For more detail about the development, and the Skidmore Owings & Merrill design, check out the San Francisco Business Times' Feb. 15 issue.