385 Homes or All Office: The Two Towers Planned at 536 Mission

On the north side of Mission Street between First and Second, a seven-story concrete building from 1979 sits back from the sidewalk behind a sunken plaza, with a pedestrian bridge leading to its doors. This was Golden Gate University’s downtown campus, and it has no classes this fall. Across the street is the 27-story tower at 535 Mission, and the Salesforce Transit Center’s rooftop park is half a block south.

The building changed hands this week, and its replacement was scheduled for a Planning Commission hearing on Thursday, September 10. Lincoln Property Co. paid $31.6 million for the campus of roughly 237,000 square feet, The Registry reported on September 9, 2026. The commission’s agenda describes the tower Lincoln and McCourt Partners want to build there, either 700 feet of office and lab space or 649 feet with up to 385 apartments over offices.

Two designs for one parcel

Both designs come from SOM, and both would demolish the existing buildings, according to the September 10 agenda. The office version totals about 1.22 million square feet of retail, office and laboratory space. The mixed version totals about 991,000 square feet with up to 385 homes, which SF YIMBY reports as 64 studios, 221 one-bedrooms, 60 two-bedrooms and 40 three-bedrooms.

Coverage has put the height anywhere from 650 to 752 feet, and every figure describes the same two buildings measured different ways. Planning counts 700 and 649 feet to the roof. The crowns reach 752 and 698 feet, per the filings SF YIMBY has reported.

The mixed version has a precedent a short walk east. 181 Fremont opened in 2018 with 67 condos stacked over 432,000 square feet of offices. The 536 Mission plan would put 385 homes over its offices, a little under six times as many.

What the 2012 plan already allows on this block

The height is already on the books. The Transit Center District Plan, adopted in 2012 alongside the new transit center, named the Transit Tower (now Salesforce Tower) the district’s crown at 1,000 feet and allowed one building of up to 850 feet between Market and Mission just west of First. It also set “a 700-foot zone on the north side of Mission Street just west of Ecker Street.” That is this parcel, zoned C-3-O(SD) Downtown-Office with a 700-S-2 height and bulk district.

Our August piece on AB 2074 and 450-foot downtown towers found that almost none of that bill’s height push is new in San Francisco. Here the ask is about shape, with exceptions sought for setbacks, streetwall and tower separation, residential open space, dwelling unit exposure, bulk, and rooftop elements above 550 feet.

Thursday’s hearing and the years after it

The agenda asks the commission for three approvals: a Downtown Project Authorization under Planning Code Section 309, up to 555,390 square feet of office space under the city’s annual office cap, and a finding that new shadow would not harm public open space. Staff recommend approval. For CEQA the department issued a general plan evaluation, and the commission’s action counts as the project’s approval.

A historic resource review by Page & Turnbull found the 1979 structure appears eligible for the California Register, treating the plaza, bridge and seating as one total design, SF YIMBY reported in February. The project on the September 10 agenda would demolish it.

The filings sketch about four years of construction from groundbreaking, with foundation work starting a year after demolition and vertical construction 18 months after demolition, per SF YIMBY. No groundbreaking date has been set. Golden Gate University has already moved, opening a downtown campus at UC Law SF’s Academic Village at 333 Golden Gate Avenue and a Lake Merced campus with San Francisco State for fall 2026.

Homes built near the transit center since 2008

Residential towers have delivered within a few blocks of 536 Mission, and most of them are condos. One Rincon Hill’s south tower opened in 2008 with 376 condos. Millennium Tower at 301 Mission followed in 2009 with 419. 181 Fremont added 67 in 2018, The Avery at 488 Folsom added 118 condos above rental floors in 2019, and Mira at 280 Spear opened in 2020 with 392 condos, 156 of them below market rate.

Those five towers hold 1,372 condominiums between them, before counting The Avery’s rentals. The mixed version of 536 Mission would add 385 apartments to a parcel with no homes on it today, and 40 of them would be three-bedrooms, about one in ten.

The neighborhoods around the site, by our numbers

Houseberry does not map a separate Rincon Hill or East Cut neighborhood, so the site sits among five that we score: South Beach, Financial District/Barbary Coast, Yerba Buena, Downtown and South of Market. Their September 2026 scores, with the city’s for comparison, are below.

South Beach leads the group at 3.1, 0.4 below the city. Safety runs from 1.9 in South of Market to 3.5 in South Beach, all under the citywide 3.8. On amenities, four of the five sit at or above the citywide 3.3 and South Beach and Yerba Buena at 3.8.

Prices are harder to pin down. All five carry a limited-data or city-data flag on price in our San Francisco rankings, so we are not quoting their medians. The citywide median was $2.2 million in August 2026, the same benchmark we used in our look at the 417 Montgomery Street sale. If you are shopping a condo nearby, the South Beach and South of Market pages carry the full score breakdown.

536 Mission was listed as items 5a, 5b and 5c on the commission’s September 10 calendar, which began at noon at City Hall. If the approvals are granted, the next change visible from the sidewalk would be demolition of the 1979 building, the step the project’s schedule counts from.

Sources

• The Registry, September 9, 2026: Lincoln Property pays $31.6MM for Golden Gate University’s San Francisco campus
• San Francisco Planning Commission agenda, September 10, 2026, items 5a to 5c (2025-007507DNX, OFA, SHD)
• San Francisco General Plan, Transit Center District Sub-Area Plan
• SF YIMBY, September 10, 2026: Meeting today for 536 Mission Street
• SF YIMBY, February 24, 2026: Brutalist building at 536 Mission deemed eligible for historic designation
• Golden Gate University, June 9, 2026: GGU expands San Francisco presence across two campuses
• Building records: 181 Fremont, One Rincon Hill, Millennium Tower, The Avery, Mira (Wikipedia)
• Houseberry neighborhood scores and San Francisco median, September 2026: San Francisco rankings