Sutter Health to sell old CPMC campus in Presidio Heights

Sutter, TMG Partners plan to offload property, city-approved plans to redevelop site with 273 homes

Matt Field, president, TMG Partners, along with renderings of 3700 California Street in Presidio Heights (TMG Partners, iStock)
Matt Field, president, TMG Partners, along with renderings of 3700 California Street in Presidio Heights (TMG Partners, iStock)

The owner of California Pacific Medical Center has listed its former San Francisco campus in Presidio Heights for sale without a list price, abandoning years-long plans to build hundreds of homes.

Sacramento-based Sutter Health has put the shuttered hospital at 3700 California St. up for sale, the San Francisco Business Times reported. Two years ago, city planners approved plans to redevelop the 5-acre campus for 273 apartments and homes.

CBRE’s Capital Markets team in San Francisco listed the hillside Presidio Heights property, described as a “once-in-a-lifetime development opportunity in one of the most coveted residential neighborhoods worldwide.” But it didn’t name a price.

Hospitals operating at 3700 California go back to 1887, with today’s six shuttered campus buildings dating from 1938. http://3700california.com/

Sutter Health moved into a newly built, seismically updated campus at 1101 Van Ness St.. on Cathedral Hill in 2019. The $2.1-billion CPMC Van Ness Campus has 274 beds.

TMG Partners, a developer based in the Financial District, worked with Robert A.M. Stern Architects to entitle the former hospital site in Presidio Heights for redevelopment into 273 residential units, spread across 19 apartment buildings and 14 single-family homes, an effort that took five years.

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The plan was to raze five of the hospital’s six existing buildings and a two-level parking garage to make way for the new residential project, to be called The Heights. The project won city approval in early 2020, and was expected to take up to two years to break ground and six years to complete.

TMG had agreed to pay $43 million to the city in lieu of building on-site affordable housing.

But TMG and Sutter Health last August moved to end the purchase and sales agreement of 2015, with both indicating Sutter planned to sell the site. The hospital operator could not immediately be reached for comment by the Business Times.

“Though we are disappointed not to be building the project, we are proud of the neighborhood process and the resulting project vision and appreciate Sutter Health’s commitment to swiftly identifying a buyer to realize the project,” TMG President Matt Field told the newspaper, in a statement.

[San Francisco Business Times] – Dana Bartholomew

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