UCSF Charges Up 300K SF Power Station Project With $575M In Bonds
The University of California San Francisco announced a plan to finance a massive medical building at the Dogpatch Power Station by selling $575M in bonds.
The 300K SF, eight-story building, featuring a cancer treatment center, would anchor the 21-acre project, located on the former Pacific Gas and Electric Co. power generation site just a mile from the university’s Mission Bay campus.
The project’s innovative financing structure involves the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, or IBank, selling more than half a billion dollars in tax-exempt bonds to Goldman Sachs.
It would then lend the proceeds to the nonprofit Campus Facilities Improvement Association. The nonprofit will have a ground lease with the Regents of the University of California and sublease to Associate Capital, which will build out the site.
The Potrero Power Station closed in 2011. Associate Capital/California Barrel Co. purchased the site in 2016 and began working with the city in a public-private partnership on a master plan to transform the Central Waterfront. The board of supervisors unanimously approved the plan in 2020.
This isn't the first time UCSF has opted to finance a project in this way. The Sandler Neurosciences Center on the Mission Bay campus was the result of a similar public-private partnership. The university partnered with Edgemoor and McCarthy Cook to develop the lab and research facility.
The Dogpatch Power Station project is expected to break ground this year, with construction to be completed by 2029. It will house 320 employees and advanced medical services, including a proton therapy center, clinics and a life sciences incubator. The entire project will include 2,600 housing units, 250 hotel rooms and 1.8M SF of commercial space.
