Solbach Property eyes 46-story apartment highrise in SF’s SoMa

Solbach Property Group aims to build a 46-story apartment tower in San Francisco’s South of Market.

The San Francisco-based developer has filed preliminary plans to build the 522-unit highrise at 636 4th Street, SFYimby reported. A coffee stand and a two-story commercial building at the site would be demolished.

The 550,000-square-foot building would include nearly 3,400 square feet of ground-floor shops and restaurants and 31,000 square feet of parking for 106 cars and 235 bicycles.

Plans call for 131 studio, 181 one-bedroom, 204 two-bedroom, and six three-bedroom apartments, with the average unit spanning 776 square feet. It would include ninth-floor and rooftop terraces.

The developer seeks to use a state density bonus law to build a larger building than zoning rules allow in exchange for 79 affordable apartments for very-low income tenants.

Solbach Property Group owns the property at 4th and Bluxome streets, a block from Caltrain’s San Francisco Station. It’s tied to the family of the late Heinz Solbach and his family trust, currently led by Carlton Linnenbach, according to the San Francisco Business Times.

In 2015, Solbach had proposed a 37-story tower with 427 condominiums in an area zoned for 85-foot buildings. Planning officials balked, calling for a code-compliant development.

The firm now proposes to construct a 461-foot-tall building in an area zoned for buildings up to 250 feet. A height waiver would exceed the area’s zoning by 210 feet.

The trapezoid-shaped tower, designed by Cordwell Solomon Buenz of Chicago, features a curving wall of glass cut by rust-colored floors and topped by a sharp cornice along 4th Street, according to an initial rendering.

The $200 million highrise would be built on the same block as stalled plans for the since-demolished San Francisco Tennis Club at 88 Bluxome Street.

It also would be built just down the street from a twin-tower complex of 1,100 apartments proposed by Tishman Speyer at 655 4th Street.

— Dana Bartholomew

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