Construction has begun at the former Candlestick Park site in San Francisco, where developer FivePoint plans 7,200 homes on roughly 270 acres of bayfront land that has sat vacant for years.
Mayor Daniel Lurie broke ground on the project Sept. 9, according to his office, starting construction on a site the city has spent years trying to move.
The first phase is far smaller than the headline number. It covers seven city blocks and roughly 700 homes, 314 of them affordable, along with the earliest portion of a planned innovation district and ground-floor retail and restaurant space. The city said that phase also carries the foundational infrastructure β roads, utilities and what the mayor’s office described as a safer and more reliable water system serving the surrounding Bayview neighborhood.
“For years, San Franciscans have heard about the potential for Candlestick,” Lurie said. “Today, I am proud that we are finally breaking ground and taking the first step toward 7,200 new homes for San Franciscans.”
He said he had visited the site early in his administration with the leaders of 12 city departments “to ask how we can go faster,” and that the city would “keep pushing to move construction faster, bring homes online sooner, and make sure the surrounding community benefits at every stage.”
What full build-out includes
At completion the development is planned to span 60 city blocks and include an innovation district with up to 2.8 million square feet of flexible commercial space, 2.5 miles of publicly accessible bay waterfront, 100 acres of parks and open space, and shops, restaurants, a hotel and entertainment uses.
On our reading, the commercial component is the part worth watching. The mayor’s office frames the innovation district as a new center of economic activity in southeastern San Francisco, which places a substantial block of future commercial space well outside the traditional downtown core. How much of it gets built, and on what timetable, is a question the groundbreaking does not settle.
Dan Hedigan, FivePoint’s president and chief executive, pointed to the location. “This is an iconic site with a remarkable history of bringing people together at Candlestick Park,” he said. “We now have an opportunity to make it central to the life of the city again as an entirely new waterfront neighborhood, with a prime location that offers proximity to both downtown San Francisco and Silicon Valley.”
Several public spaces and streets at the site are planned to carry the names of Giants and 49ers legends, including Willie Mays, Bill Walsh, Joe Montana and Jerry Rice.
A project the Bayview has waited on
The groundbreaking carries weight in a neighborhood that has absorbed a long sequence of promises about the site. Dr. Veronica Hunnicutt, chair of the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee, said in the mayor’s release that “for generations, Bayview families have helped build San Francisco while waiting for the Candlestick project in our own community.”
“Today’s groundbreaking is a step toward the homes, jobs, and opportunities our community deserves,” she said. “Now we must keep the promises β to our elders who brought us this far and our children whose future we are building.”
Thor Kaslofsky, executive director of the city’s Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure, called the start of construction “the result of a strong public-private partnership focused on delivering real benefits for San Franciscans, from new homes to public open space.”
The city placed the groundbreaking inside a broader housing push. Lurie’s office cited its Family Zoning plan, a proposed affordable-housing investment and the PermitSF permitting overhaul, and said the mayor has opened affordable homes in Bayview-Hunters Point, the Mission, Hayes Valley and Haight-Ashbury in recent months, and broke ground on all-affordable artist housing on Market Street at the end of July.
Those zoning changes are themselves contested. RealtyWire reported last month on litigation brought against San Francisco and two other California cities over the state’s transit-oriented housing law.
Candlestick is one of several former major-league stadium sites moving toward master-planned redevelopment. RealtyWire covered the pattern when the Kansas City Chiefs and Hunt Midwest formed a joint venture to master-plan a stadium district in Kansas City, Kan. More development coverage is collected on RealtyWire’s Commercial Real Estate page.
