San Francisco Recovery Fund hired Boston developer BXP Inc. to jump-start the Oceanwide development at First and Mission streets, the San Francisco Business Times reported. BXP, which co-developed the nearby 61-story Salesforce Tower in 2018, was hired as development adviser on the stalled site. The company will consult with SFRF on technical aspects, such as building systems and design, as well as leasing and office market dynamics.

“We felt that [BXP] had unique insight into this market and what it would take to turn our concept for the First and Mission site into an actual development and occupied building,” SFRF co-founder Dan Kingsley told the SFBT. 

With its wide swaths of street-level concrete foundations, exposed rebar and hulks of rusting structural steel, the unfinished Oceanwide development site has been an eyesore for years.

Oceanwide Holdings acquired the development site in 2015 for $296M and began construction on two towers as part of a 2M SF mixed-used development a year later. But it halted construction efforts on one tower in 2019 amid capital shortages and stalled the other tower in 2020 amid the onset of the pandemic. Oceanwide poured nearly $1B into the project before winding it down.

The 1.2-acre Oceanwide project, known locally as The Pit, was foreclosed on in 2021. In January, Haitong International Equity Investment Management of Hong Kong, the original lender, acquired the unfinished site at a foreclosure auction on the steps of City Hall, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Haitong’s credit bid of $100M was an 86% discount from the $713.5M owed by Oceanwide Holdings.

SFRF purchased the site from Haitong for $60M, although the fund had to pay multiple liens levied against the development site by a slew of former contractors associated with the original development. SFRF is fully funded through predevelopment of its restart at First and Mission streets, and the recovery fund will redesign the larger mixed-use tower into a pure office play amid San Francisco's ongoing office resurgence, the SFBT reported. 

The city’s office tenants leased 870K SF more than they vacated in the second quarter, the fourth consecutive quarter of positive net absorption, which hadn’t happened since 2019, according to Newmark. Leasing for the quarter totaled 3.3M SF, while tenant demand remained strong at nearly 10M SF.