The File After Three Filings
The same half-acre parcel at 3rd and Harrison Street has been filed three times since 2021. The first application proposed 35 stories and 522 apartments with 84 affordable units. A 2025 modification raised the height to 37 floors and reduced the inclusionary housing to 53 units. The refiling now under review proposes 45 stories, 480 feet and 501 apartments, with 51 affordable units.
The application states that the estimated cost and timeline for construction have not yet been established. No construction start date, no cost estimate and no financing terms appear in any of the three filings.
What the File Shows About Delivery
Three filings have produced three programmes and no construction. The capacity on paper has grown to a 608,500-square-foot building with 501 apartments, and the affordable count has fallen from 84 to 51 as the height rose.
The street-view image published with the filing report shows the parcel in surface parking. City records show the last sale in 2021 at $34 million.
Re-entitlement puts the approvals back through the planning process. Every published figure describes a programme that has not been built.
The Capacity the Filing Unlocks
The refiled application is not empty. It would permit 501 rental homes, of which 51 are deed-restricted to very low-income households at about half the area median income. It invokes Senate Bill 423 and the State Density Bonus law to streamline approval and to raise residential capacity above base zoning.
It carries a seven-story podium garage for 150 cars and space for 239 bicycles, and it lists 58 studios, 287 one-bedrooms and 105 two-bedrooms. Those three counts total 450 apartments. Henning Larsen and Multistudio are the joint architects.
An approval would leave the sponsor holding a permitted 45-story site on half an acre beside a light-rail station.
The Site in the District
The application states that future residents would be ten minutes from Market Street on foot and ten minutes from the 4th and Brannan Street Muni light-rail station. The parcel sits in SoMa, on the east side of 3rd Street at Harrison.
The Case for Holding the Approvals
The strongest argument against this reading rests on the approvals themselves. Entitlement is the scarce asset in San Francisco, and a site that holds a 45-story approval can start when capital returns.
The Dineen report cited in the filing names six addresses where developers are starting construction or expect to start soon: 321 Florida Street, 360 Fifth, 400 Divisadero Street and 2918 Mission Street, plus housing components at Potrero Power Station and Pier 70. On that reading the three filings leave a permitted site ready for capital.
What Would Change the Verdict
Three published items would move this site from permission to housing: a construction cost, a start date and a filed building permit. The application publishes none of the three, and the record states nothing about what the sponsor is waiting for.
A change in application status from submitted to approved would be the first signal. Until then the file holds permissions and no building.