Port Commission OKs Pier 70 Mixed-Use Development

Port Commission OKs Pier 70 Mixed-Use DevelopmentPier 70. | Image: Google Maps
Nathan Falstreau
Published on September 29, 2017

On Tuesday, the San Francisco Port Commission approved the Pier 70 mixed-use development project, which could potentially bring up to 2,150 new homes as well as commercial space to the Dogpatch neighborhood. 

SF Planning approved the project in late August, but the final decision on whether to move forward rests with the Board of Supervisors, which will weigh in this month. 

“This exciting new waterfront neighborhood will join community and industry," Elaine Forbes, the Port's executive director, said in a statement, "engaging residents, workers, artists and manufacturers in a lively mix of uses and activities throughout the site.” 

“Once complete," she said, "Pier 70 will reflect the city’s diversity and creativity, inviting the public to new parks, restaurants, arts uses, event spaces and public access to the San Francisco Bay, in an area that has been closed to public access for more than a century.”

Proposed Pier 70 redevelopment area. | Image: Google Maps

New zoning rules for Pier 70 approved by the Planning Commission—now referred to as the Pier 70 Special Use District (SUD)—allow for the rehabilitation of significant historic buildings on the site, as well as construction of new buildings for housing, local manufacturing and "community amenities." 

Between 1.1 and 2.3 million square feet of office space is slated for the new project. It may also include between 1,645 to 3,025 housing units—30 percent of which will be earmarked affordable—and roughly 475,000 square feet of ground floor uses for retail, the arts and light industrial purposes. 

The shoreline will also transform as part of the project. Renovations include providing and maintaining nine acres of new open space, which will include the Irish Hill playground, a market square, public art installations, central commons area, and waterfront parks along the 1,380 feet of shoreline. 

Other aspects of the project include:

  • a 90,000-square-foot building to house local performing and arts nonprofits and permanently affordable studio space for tenants
  • community facilities that will serve educational and recreational needs for residents, including on-site childcare. 
Pier 70. | Image: Google Maps

The project also addresses climate change. To protect the area against estimated sea level rise projections in 2100, developers plan to elevate the grade of the site and install long-term seawall improvements that will cost up to $2.5 billion.

“Pier 70 will be a neighborhood for all San Franciscans,” Port Commission President Willie Adams said.

Port officials said the development would create 28,000 new jobs in construction, office and retail, in addition to more than 500 units of permanently affordable housing.