A 24-month build beside City College
Balboa Reservoir Building E rises at 11 Frida Kahlo Way, across from the City College of San Francisco Ocean campus. The city's affordable housing loan committee record of 4 April 2025 describes a 7-storey building, 100 percent affordable, with 128 family units, a midrise Type III frame over a Type I podium and Nibbi and Pilot as the general contractor. The committee committed up to $46,574,009 in final gap financing.
The same record sets the schedule an operator should plan against. The sponsor anticipated closing construction financing by 30 June 2025, starting vertical construction in October 2025, reaching a temporary certificate of occupancy in October 2027 and full lease-up in April 2028. That is a 24-month vertical build with a further six-month lease-up tail.
Hoodline reported on 7 September 2026 that Building E and Block A are under construction and that developers are now advancing 704 of the master plan's 1,100 units. Building E is the first of four affordable buildings in the master plan.
Two packages, one trade pool
Building A, 159 affordable units, runs from January 2026 to November 2027, financed in part through $91.5 million in tax-exempt bond cap and $6.96 million in annual federal tax credits recommended by the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee in August 2025. Phase 1A infrastructure work began in November 2025. Permits for three further apartment buildings entered the queue in September 2026, and Hoodline reports the first phase will add 288 units when it completes in 2028.
Building E is a Type III frame over a Type I podium. That is the structural family a hotel uses when it adds floors, strengthens a podium or rebuilds a ground-floor garage. An operator bidding renovation work into 2026 and 2027 bids against a general contractor holding 128 units of midrise pipeline on one site, beside a second affordable building of 159 units.
Three bids to protect. Set the general contractor and the mechanical, electrical and plumbing subcontractors before the budget cycle closes. Move the bid date, not the construction start, when the market tightens. Separate any scope that needs a tower crane or a concrete pump into its own line.
Where the staff will actually live
Building E carries 56 one-bedroom, 39 two-bedroom and 32 three-bedroom homes plus one two-bedroom manager's unit, according to the April 2025 loan committee record. Thirty-one units are restricted at 40 percent of area median income, 36 at 65 percent and 60 at 80 percent. The building holds one bicycle parking space per home and no vehicle parking.
Half the master plan is mandated affordable. The Board of Supervisors set that requirement when it approved the master plan and development agreement in August 2020, and BRIDGE Housing and AvalonBay were selected as master developers in 2017. Block F, a 151-unit building filed for permits in July 2022, was planned to prioritise faculty and staff at City College of San Francisco and the San Francisco Unified School District.
Read the income bands before treating the corridor as workforce housing. Restricted homes at 40 to 80 percent of area median income reach specific wage bands, and a hotel entry-level rate may sit outside them. The narrower reading is this: 550 restricted homes arrive within walking distance of a campus and a rail station, and they draw from the same renter pool your staff already competes in.
City College of San Francisco's Ocean campus sits 0.14 miles straight-line from the site. Balboa Park station sits about 0.47 miles away.
Three lines for the next budget
Hold contingency for trade labour across 2026 and 2027, because concurrent packages on one site compete for the same crews. Budget longer lead times for switchgear, lifts and rooftop plant. Review relocation and commuting assumptions against the 550 restricted homes moving through the corridor.
One caution. The loan committee record is an evaluation of an anticipated schedule, and it states the sponsor's own dates. Confirm the current schedule with the contractor before the work is bid.