Prologis Plans Towers Over Caltrain Yards in San Francisco
Prologis is preparing to submit plans for a cluster of towers and a new train station over Caltrain’s railyards at the junction of Mission Bay and South of Market.
The transit-oriented hub, part of an $8.25B, 1.3-mile rail extension known as the Portal, will feature an 850-foot tower as its centerpiece.
The new skyscraper on the 20-acre site at Fourth and King streets would become the second-tallest building in downtown San Francisco, equal to the Transamerica Pyramid and dwarfed only by the 1,070-foot Salesforce Tower, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The Portal project aims to extend Caltrain’s service from Fourth and King to the Salesforce Transit Center, eventually facilitating a connection with a future high-speed rail line.
Prologis owns the land under the 20-acre site bordered by Fourth, King, Seventh and Townsend streets, currently Caltrain’s northern terminus. Caltrain holds a perpetual easement to operate rail on the site.
The REIT is expected to submit an application for the transit-oriented mega-development this spring. Phase one of the project will include the 850-foot tower, the new rail station and potentially two other high-rises on the eastern end of the property.
Prologis and Caltrain, which have been in formal discussions on the transit-oriented project since 2021, envision a mixed-use development including homes, offices and neighborhood retail.
San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development expects the project to include up to 2,000 homes. The city’s Planning Department has released a timeline for the project which estimates that construction could begin in 2028, assuming approvals are secured by 2027, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
At a community meeting last month, an urban designer for the project said the plans include a linear park along Townsend Street extending from Fourth to Sixth Street, flanked by ground-floor retail. Fifth Street, which currently dead-ends at the railroad tracks, would extend to the south, connecting Mission Bay and SoMa.
The first phase of the Prologis-Caltrain project can proceed independently from the Portal, which envisions moving rail lines underground and is not expected to be completed until 2032 at the earliest.
Pandemic-era delays to the development of the rail connection to the $2.2B Salesforce Transit Center, which opened in 2018, as well as the hollowing out of the downtown workforce by remote work during the pandemic, has stymied the efforts of owner-operator the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) to bring retail tenants to the center.
According to a report last month in the Business Times, several retail outlets that signed leases in the first two years after the center opened have delayed their store openings and negotiated reduced rents on the spaces to minimize operational costs while waiting for market conditions to improve.
Modi, a Mexican and Italian fusion restaurant, became the Transit Center’s first new restaurant to open in 2024 last month in a 2,000 SF space at 88 Natoma Street that it began leasing in 2019.