BXP and JLL join team planning 915-foot San Francisco office tower

The San Francisco Recovery Fund said Friday that BXP and JLL have joined the team behind Fifty at First, the 915-foot, 1.5-million-square-foot office tower planned for First and Mission streets downtown, with BXP consulting on development, leasing and marketing and JLL holding the exclusive office leasing mandate. Connect CRE first reported both appointments.

Gensler leads the design team for what the report says would be the second-tallest building in San Francisco. The supporting roster is already thick: Field Operations on land, landscape and public realm, Magnusson Klemencic Associates on structural engineering, MEYERS+ ENGINEERS on mechanical, electrical and plumbing, and Goodby Silverstein & Partners on branding, with SFMOMA offering recommendations on the building's public art program. Engineering, branding and a public-art review are therefore in place before the report has established a construction start, a project cost or a financing package.

BXP's advisory role across development, leasing and marketing is narrower than ownership, and the coverage does not say whether the firm holds an equity interest, what the arrangement pays, or how long it runs. Rod Diehl, BXP's executive vice president for West Coast regions, called the project "a rare opportunity to help shape the next chapter of downtown San Francisco" and said its location, design and approach to the workplace give it the potential to be a defining addition to the skyline.

For a tower of that size, the commercial side is being settled first: a development consultant and an exclusive leasing agent named before any disclosure of capital, cost or schedule. The report identifies the San Francisco Recovery Fund only by name and does not describe its investors, the capital it has raised, or how it expects to deliver the building.

The market it would enter has spent the year on the debt side, with maturity extensions and modifications carrying the office conversation rather than new construction, and with CRE CLO modifications holding delinquencies below 1 percent while loans that have not exited stack up into the next maturity test, as this publication has reported. None of that settles whether a 915-foot tower rises at First and Mission; it does mean the leasing mandate is signed before the financing is named.

A capital stack and a construction start have not yet followed the design team.