Kilroy Offers Choices for San Francisco Flower Market Project

Kilroy Realty Corporation is opening up its options to kick off its stalled redevelopment of the San Francisco Flower Market site.

The Los Angeles-based firm filed an application with the city of San Francisco to tweak its design for its mixed-use project at Sixth and Brannan Streets in Central South of Market, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The firm was approved in 2019 to construct office buildings at the site spanning 2 million square feet. In its new application, Kilroy floated several new variants of its approved plan, all of which remove a 22,000-square-foot child care facility and about 1,000 square feet of community space that were part of the original project. The amount of parking on site and the height of the proposed buildings, however, have increased.

In one version of the modified project, Kilroy proposed constructing five buildings with roughly 2.6 million square feet of office or lab space, up to 100,000 square feet of retail space, 300,000 square feet of institutional space and more than 800 parking spots. In this iteration, the buildings would range from 11 to 18 stories tall.

Another version of the project would utilize the state density bonus law to build seven buildings containing a total of 3,532 new homes; each structure would rise a maximum height of 500 feet, or up to 49 stories. That version would also include 100,000 square feet of retail space and more than 1,800 parking spaces.

Another version, the “Mixed-Use Variant,” would have 1,242 housing units as well as 1.5 million square feet of office or lab space, 100,000 square feet of commercial space and more than 1,000 parking spaces. They would be housed across five buildings reaching as high as 480 feet, or 47 stories.

The “Institutional Variant,” meanwhile, proposes building roughly 1.4 million square feet of medical or institutional space, 1.2 million square feet for office and lab tenants, plus 100,000 square feet of retail and 431 parking spaces across five buildings that would top out at a maximum of 270 feet, or 18 stories.

The city of San Francisco faces a stubborn office vacancy rate and desperate need for housing.

The old San Francisco Flower Market has since relocated to a 125,000 square feet at 901 16th Street in Potrero Hill and opened to customers earlier this year.

— Chris Malone Méndez