By Jon Peterson
San Francisco-based Oyster Development is kicked off the development and construction earlier this month on the 260-unit Rockwell condominium project in San Francisco located at 1634-1690 Pine Street.
“This is a development project that should have a total development cost of around $180 million. National Real Estate Advisors is providing a construction loan for $143.5 million, or about 70 percent loan-to-cost based on the current value of the asset,” says Dean Givas, president of Oyster.
The balance of the project is coming from equity that is being supplied by Oyster Development and Toronto-based Tricon Capital. Tricon declined to comment when contacted for this story.
Oyster is a firm believer in the current state of the condo market in San Francisco. “I still believe there is a lot more demand that there is product available for condo buyers in the market now. This year there is maybe around a total of 400 to 500 units available for people to buy and a lot more demand than that,” said Givas.
The construction loan for this project was arranged last month, and construction on the project’s first tower was started shortly after that. This housing should be ready to be delivered to the marketplace sometime in the summer of 2016.
Oyster is looking at attracting a mix of buyer groups to its project. “We are thinking that the project will draw in both first time home buyers and current home owners who are looking to move up for the first time,” said Givas.
This development has not yet set the pricing levels of the condos. This will likely happen sometime in April of next year. The Rockwell will have two 13-story towers. There also will be one level of below-grade parking for 201 cars and 4,000 square feet of retail space. This space has not been leased yet but it will be used by the condo owners and could play off of the Whole Foods store that is not that far away from the project.
Rockwell will become the third development that Oyster and Tricon have done together in San Francisco over the past several years. The others are the 98-unit Marlow development in Nob Hill and the 114-unit Vida in the Mission Hill section of San Francisco.
Tricon is known as a real estate investment management firm that places capital in a variety of projects on behalf of pension funds and other institutional investors. Its investments include a variety of structures like equity or mezzanine debt transactions.
