1,500 Residential Units Proposed On Former Tennis Club Property In Soma

A change made in March to the Central SoMa Plan has already yielded some interest from a developer, with a long-stalled development property at 88 Bluxome now back in the mix as a high-rise residential complex.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors were either correctly reading the tea leaves or they may have had some background information back in March when they voted to change the Central SoMa Plan, allowing for more housing and less office space in the approximatly 17-square-block area of SoMa. The area was touted in the last decade as the next big hope for alleviating SF's chronic shortage of office space, but the pandemic solved that problem, and developments like Mission Rock and the Chase Center got out ahead of things in terms of providing new Class A space.

The SF Business Times broke the news Thursday that a new developer has moved in on one of the prominent development properties in Central SoMa, 88 Bluxome, aka the former San Francisco Tennis Club. Once planned to be a 1.1 million-square-foot mixed-use development, with 775,000 square feet of office space, the new proposal sees the property bringing in residential developer Strada to build two residential towers with a total of 1,500 units.

Bluxome Street is an alley near Townsend Street, and the property would be at Bluxome and Sixth streets.

Strada, which is based in San Francisco, is proposing splitting the 88 Bluxome property into three lots, with towers measuring 599 feet and 528 feet in height occupying two of them. A third parcel will be reserved for an eventual affordable development. The towers would contain, respectively, 785 units and 715 units, with a mix of studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom units. 150 affordable units will qualify the project for the state's density bonus.

The site has its entitlements for the mixed-use project, which was previously proposed by Alexandria Real Estate Equities and TMG Partners, but it has been essentially stalled since 2020, when committed anchor tenant Pinterest backed out of its commitment. And SFist readers may recall that the developers caused some outrage in 2021 in the tennis community when they reneged on a promise to build a replacement tennis club at the property.

As the Business Times notes, Strada's proposal also does not include any sort of tennis club. And the drama is not over there, as the Bay Club, which owned the original tennis club, just sued Alexandria last month for $17.5 million, claiming that the developer left it without a permanent home.

Alexandria parted ways with project developer TMG last year, and it appears they would partner with Strada on the new proposed development.

Previously: City Hall Revises Now-Moribund Central SoMa Plan By Allowing More Housing and Much Less Office Space

Rendering via SCB