The deal on the record
The Board of Supervisors approved the 41-story tower at 530 Sansome Street on 28 October 2025. The vote closed an entitlement that runs back to 2019, when the city sought a developer to acquire the Fire Station 13 site and build a replacement. Related California was selected.
McCourt Partners and Related California announced a joint venture on 22 April 2026, reported by San Francisco YIMBY. McCourt acquired an equity stake. The announcement names a partner and no construction lender.
The terms the city holds in writing
The March 2025 environmental study records the affordable-housing term. The approval agreement carries around $4.5 million for a Chinatown project at 774 Pacific Street, half of it payable once the application receives final approval.
The replacement fire station sits in every version of the scheme. The podium carries a cafe, a hotel arrival room and an office lobby at ground level, a 4,000-square-foot restaurant over Washington Street on the second floor, a hotel lobby, two meeting rooms and a ballroom on the third floor.
Those are the terms a counterparty can read. The record publishes no construction loan and no pre-lease. The April 2026 announcement states that the project team has yet to provide an estimated timeline for groundbreaking.
What the entitlement history shows a counterparty
Three earlier versions of the site carried a Skidmore Owings & Merrill design. The March 2025 environmental study records a 19-story commercial infill with a 200-key hotel and a 21-story apartment tower with 256 units. Each version carried a replacement fire station.
The dated chain runs from August 2024 to April 2026. Plans were revealed in August 2024, the notice of preparation followed on 12 November 2024, the environmental study arrived in March 2025, the Planning Commission reviewed the proposal on 14 May 2025, the Board of Supervisors approved it on 28 October 2025, and the joint venture was announced in April 2026.
Seven years separate the city's search for a developer from the equity partner. The public component held its place through every version.
Two published figures that do not agree
The office area reads 412,000 square feet in the November 2024 environmental notice and in the October 2025 approval report. The April 2026 joint-venture announcement reads 342,000 square feet. All three reports carry the same 649,500-square-foot total.
The hotel area reads 230,100 square feet in the November 2024 notice, the October 2025 approval report and the April 2026 announcement. The same area reads 194,750 square feet in the March 2025 study and 128,000 to 189,000 square feet in the May 2025 filing.
A counterparty pricing a lease or a management agreement works from one of these numbers. The record publishes four.
The position
An approval instrument for a hotel-and-office hybrid should require severable phases. The hotel and the fire station should be able to proceed on their own schedule. A soft office market then holds no power over public safety infrastructure.
The same instrument should publish its milestones. A recorded construction loan, a signed pre-lease and a filed building permit would settle the capital question. None of the three is published.
And it should price the public benefit against the schedule it controls. A payment tied to final approval collects. A payment tied to a construction start waits on a decision the developer makes.
Verdict: approve the hotel. Approve the fire station the hotel helps pay for. Treat the office half as the private leasing risk it carries, and hold the public half to a schedule of its own.