A tower that has never broken ground
Parcel F at 542-550 Howard Street would carry 189 hotel guest rooms, 165 apartments and 325,000 square feet of offices inside 61 storeys. Pelli Clarke & Partners drew the tower, the firm behind the neighbouring Salesforce Tower.
The site sits undisturbed, and no delivery date is published.
The room count is not settled across the record
San Francisco YIMBY published 189 hotel guest rooms and 165 apartments in December 2021 and repeated the same counts in July 2023. Markets of Tomorrow publishes 180 hotel keys and 165 residences. The 2016 development vision put the hotel at 200 to 300 rooms above 250,000 to 425,000 square feet of offices, with 200 condominium units above those.
The published counts differ by nine keys. Any rate projection drawn from the plan rests on which count holds.
The brand and the interiors
Hines announced the Rosewood deal on 10 September 2021. Rosewood committed to opening the hotel by 2026. The guest room count in that announcement is approximately 180 rooms and suites.
Joyce Wang Studio holds the interior design brief for the guest rooms and suites. Rosewood was founded in Dallas and operates from Hong Kong.
The tower reaches 806 feet at the parapet and 750 feet at the roof. That height places it among the tallest buildings in the city.
The bridge lands on the park roof
A pedestrian bridge connects the tower to Salesforce Park. The Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which owns and operates the park, publishes the park at 5.4 acres with 600 trees and 16,000 plants.
Public elevators run to the fifth floor, where the podium retail sits and the bridge begins. The programme puts hotel-serviced homes above that retail.
The rate line the market is working from
Engine publishes an average nightly rate of $165 for San Francisco across 3.1 million public rate observations from May 2024 to April 2026. Those are par rates, the cheapest public price at the time of each search.
The same series places the city 18th of 50 major United States markets, 11 per cent above the $148 median of that set. Month by month the average runs from $129 in December to $197 in March, a spread of 35 per cent between the cheapest month and the priciest.
What 189 keys can move
One hundred and eighty-nine keys cannot move a citywide average. A new ultra-luxury property prices above that average rather than at it, and the ceiling at the top of a market is set by the rooms sold there.
The tower would matter as a reference point. A ground-up ultra-luxury hotel in the Transbay core would give operators a published rate to position against, and it would give Rosewood a second Bay Area benchmark.
The schedule record
The Transbay Joint Powers Authority sold the parcel to Hines in 2016 for $160 million, payable in quarterly installments from 2023 through 2027. The plan won its approvals in January 2020.
Two deadlines have passed without a tower. The 2016 development agreement set a $70 million penalty if the project did not arrive by the end of 2023. The developer later agreed a $40 million penalty in installments, with the first $5 million due by 30 April 2024. The partnership missed that date, and the $70 million obligation returned.
An $80 million loan against the parcel matured in October 2023. JPMorgan Chase and United Overseas Bank had extended two $40 million loans through that month. The 0.75-acre parcel and its entitlements have been on the market since July 2023.
Markets of Tomorrow records the tower as announced, never started and listed for sale, with the expected delivery date still to be determined.