Many moons ago, Mission Bay (303 acres) was a salt marsh/lagoon. In the mid-1800s, it became a place to dump refuse from building projects and later from the 1906 earthquake. Then, it became an industrial area that included shipbuilding, canneries, warehouses, etc.
In the 1990s, it was a veritable wasteland owned by Southern Pacific Railway (who transferred it to their development arm, Catellus Development Corporation). In 1998 the Board of Supervisors designated it as a redevelopment area, and that’s when visionaries got to work. Alexandria Real Estate Equities set out to create one of the world’s foremost biotech centers, Bosa Development purchased residential sites to build condominiums (Radiance being the first), and Tishman Speyer went to work building Gap’s Old Navy HQ (in the “middle of nowhere”). Below is a map of Mission Bay circa 2007. Salesforce owned 14 acres but decided to instead build San Francisco’s tallest building at Mission & First. You can see the SF Giants parking lot (aka Seawall Lot 337), which is now under development as “Mission Rock,” a joint venture with Tishman that is planned to include 1,000+ housing units, a hotel, shops, parks, etc.
The Golden State Warriors are the latest visionary to arrive on the scene; they are the force behind Chase Center that reportedly spent $1.5 billion to build their complex (which hardly makes economic sense for only 81 home basketball games). So, they imagined the Center as an entertainment venue plus a place for sporting events. The complex is some 2 million square feet spread across five structures that include two 11-story office buildings for Uber’s new corporate headquarters. BTW, JPMorgan Chase contributed a cool $15 million/year for 20 years ($300 million total) for key naming rights; others made lesser donations.
Creative genius was led by the design folks at MANICA Architecture, while construction was a GC joint venture of Clark Construction & Mortenson, with a workforce of close to 10,000.
The Center’s debut was a September 2019 performance by Metallica alongside the San Francisco Symphony, followed by the initial Warriors game against the LA Lakers in October. The Warriors lost.
LISA will launch its first (test) game targeted for Q3 that will feature the 39-story Jasper building on Harrison at First Street in San Francisco. The Jasper building was designed by HKS Architects, built by BuildGroup, and developed by Crescent Heights, who sold it to Northwestern Mutual in 2020.
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