Central SoMa Key Site Asks to Push 981,000 Sq Ft to 2028

San Francisco rewrote the rules inside one rectangle, bounded by Market, Townsend, 2nd and 6th, so the blocks in the middle could finally get built. The Central SoMa Plan passed the Board of Supervisors unanimously on December 4, 2018. Six years on, one of its key sites is on Thursday's Planning Commission agenda, and it is not there to break ground. It is there to ask for eighteen more months.

The sponsor at 725-765 Harrison Street wants its Large Project Authorization pushed to March 24, 2028, carrying a 981,000-square-foot approval with it. Nothing is decided. This is a request at items 7a, 7b and 7c on Thursday's September 24, 2026 Planning Commission agenda. Staff recommends approval with conditions. The vote is at noon in Room 416.

Attached to that approval is a roughly 15,000-square-foot slice of the site promised to the city for affordable housing. It has been waiting since 2019, and it waits another 18 months with everything else.

The plan was written for a city that had run out of office space

Central SoMa was the city's bet that the blocks between the Financial District and the ballpark could absorb a generation of growth.

The adopted plan was projected to deliver close to 16 million square feet of housing and jobs, 33 percent affordable, and more than $2 billion in public benefits including $500 million for transit. The Central Subway was going in underneath it.

Office vacancy then was about 3 percent, as Anne Taupier of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development reminded the San Francisco Examiner in March 2025. It is now 29.2 percent citywide, per CBRE's second-quarter 2026 figures. Better than it was, and the market absorbed almost 964,000 square feet net that quarter, mostly on AI leasing. We wrote about where those tenants are landing. But 29 percent does not finance a new 810,000-square-foot tower, and the Board of Supervisors conceded as much on March 18, 2025, when it revised the plan to stop requiring that most of a large project's floor area be commercial.

What 981,000 square feet was supposed to hold

The approved building is a plan-era artifact and the proportions show it. Office is 83 percent of the floor area. Everything the neighborhood uses day to day fits in what is left.

That table is the deal Central SoMa struck. A key site got 185 feet and 14 stories, well above the old zoning, in exchange for PDR space, child care, a plaza and land for housing. The height was the carrot, the rest the price, and neither has been collected.

The entitlement expires the day of the hearing

Do the arithmetic. Eighteen months back from March 24, 2028 lands on September 24, 2026. The authorization runs out the day the Commission meets to consider extending it.

The original approval came December 12, 2019, with an initial 505,000-square-foot office allocation. Boston Properties, the sponsor then, said in a December 19, 2019 release that "construction could commence in the second half of 2020." It did not. The approval was modified June 16, 2022 to add 40,000 square feet of office, and the site went quiet.

The 15,000 square feet nobody is talking about

The part of this item that matters most to housing gets one clause in the agenda. The site carries a land dedication of roughly 15,000 square feet to the Mayor's Office of Housing, and that parcel was supposed to become 144 affordable homes.

The city already picked developers. In a July 8, 2021 announcement, the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development awarded 725 Harrison to HomeRise and the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, for permanent supportive housing for formerly homeless San Franciscans in the Filipino Cultural Heritage District. TNDC's project page still lists it as planned, last updated July 2021.

Five years in predevelopment, because the land under it belongs to an office project that never broke ground. I could not confirm the exact trigger that transfers the parcel, and the agenda does not spell it out, so treat that as Thursday's open question for staff. What is clear is that the dedication is a condition of this entitlement, and this entitlement is what expires.

I want the office building. More jobs in Central SoMa is the point of the subway running under it. But if the tower is years from financing, the better outcome is not another extension in 2028. It is getting the 144 homes loose from the office they are hostage to.

What a frozen pipeline looks like from the sidewalk

People live in Central SoMa now, and the stall is their daily experience, not a capital-markets abstraction.

South of Market, the industrial-turned-mixed-use district the Central SoMa Plan sits inside, scores 2.1 out of 5 with us, 90th of the 92 San Francisco neighborhoods we rank. Safety is 1.9, schools 2.0, and only amenities at 3.2 comes near the citywide line. South Beach, the waterfront stretch just east of it around the ballpark, scores 3.1 overall with a 3.8 on amenities. Two neighborhoods, one street grid apart, a full point between them.

The gap is about what got finished. South Beach got its towers twenty years ago. South of Market got a plan. A 1.9 on safety describes surface lots, roll-up doors and blocks with nobody on them after 6pm, the exact condition more housing would change.

Meanwhile the citywide median sale price reached about $2.20 million in August 2026, up from roughly $1.89 million in September 2025. The city keeps getting more expensive while its largest planned district produces nothing. A low score with a big approved pipeline behind it is a very different bet from a low score with nothing coming, and Central SoMa has been the first kind for six years.

Four questions people are asking about the Harrison Street extension

Does this mean 725 Harrison is cancelled?

No. An extension request is the opposite of a cancellation. It is the sponsor keeping a valid approval alive instead of letting it lapse, which is what walking away looks like.

What happens if the Commission says no?

The authorization expires and the project loses its entitlement. Rebuilding it means going back through Planning under today's rules, which allow far more housing here than the 2019 approval did. Staff recommends approval, so this branch is unlikely.

Are the 144 affordable homes at 725 Harrison dead?

Not dead, not moving. HomeRise and TNDC were selected in 2021 and the project is still listed as planned. The dedication is tied to this entitlement, so 18 more months means 18 more months waiting.

Would a new proposal here have to be office?

No longer. The Board removed the commercial-square-footage mandate for large Central SoMa projects on March 18, 2025, which is why a rethink of this block could come back mostly residential.

What to watch on Thursday

The vote is the least interesting part. Staff recommends approval, the Commission usually follows on extensions, and 725-765 Harrison will most likely have until March 2028.

Listen for whether a commissioner asks what the agenda does not: what has to happen before the housing parcel transfers. The same agenda carries GLIDE's new seven-story, 41,173-square-foot facility at 330-334 Ellis Street, replacing a parking lot. One item is a building somebody is ready to build. The other is a promise asking for more time.

If you are shopping SoMa or South Beach, the read is simple. Approved square footage is not built square footage, and the gap here is years wide. Our San Francisco neighborhood rankings show how the finished parts of the city compare while the planned parts wait. The hearing starts at noon Thursday in Room 416 at City Hall.

Sources

San Francisco Planning Commission, Notice of Hearing and Agenda, September 24, 2026, Items 7a, 7b and 7c, Case Nos. 2005.0759ENX-03, CUA-03 and VAR-04

San Francisco Planning Commission, agenda for December 12, 2019, Case 2005.0759ENX/OFA/VAR, 725 Harrison Street

BXP (Boston Properties), "Boston Properties Receives Approval From San Francisco Planning Commission for 4th and Harrison Development Project in Central SoMa District," December 19, 2019

SF Planning, Central SoMa Plan program page

San Francisco Examiner, "SF revamps Central SoMa Plan amid new economic reality," March 18, 2025

CBRE, San Francisco Office Figures, Q2 2026

HomeRise and Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, "HomeRise and TNDC to build permanent supportive housing in SoMa," July 8, 2021

Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, 725 Harrison property page, last updated July 15, 2021

San Francisco YIMBY, "Modifications Proposed for 725 Harrison Street, SoMa, San Francisco," May 2022

Houseberry, San Francisco neighborhood pages, city guide and rankings, retrieved September 21, 2026