The Application on File
Formal plans for 50 First Street landed on 13 October 2026. The filing describes a 913-foot tower named Fifty at First, about 1.74 million square feet in total, with 1.52 million square feet of office and about 44,250 square feet of basement garage. SF YIMBY reported the application.
The tower itself holds office and garage. The hotel rooms tied to this site sit in the second phase.
The 169 Rooms and the Tower They Moved To
The site carries a second tower at 528 Mission Street under the 2016 entitlements. That tower rises 54 floors and 605 feet, yielding about 636,100 square feet: 378,720 square feet of housing, 255,350 square feet of hotel space and 2,000 square feet of restaurant space. The same set carries 156 market-rate apartments and 169 guest rooms, split into 42 one-bedrooms, 83 two-bedrooms and 31 three-bedrooms.
The applicant states the Mission Street tower keeps its 2016 design and programming. No hotel operator, no brand and no opening date appear in the record for those 169 rooms.
The Footprint Becomes a Park First
The application sets out a phasing concept for the Mission Street tower. Before that tower is built, the footprint is to be improved with interim publicly accessible open space.
The hotel allocation therefore sits on a parcel scheduled to open as a park. No construction date for the second tower appears in the application or in either of the two SF YIMBY reports.
The Ownership Path From Pit to Recovery Fund
Construction on the Oceanwide Center stopped in 2020. Swinerton and Webcor, the joint general contractors, sued the developer for unpaid work in 2021. A $28 million settlement followed, and the site went into foreclosure in 2024.
The San Francisco Recovery Fund bought the property in January 2026 for a reported $60 million. The site holds the incomplete foundation of the Oceanwide Center.
BXP serves as project consultant for development, leasing and marketing. JLL holds the exclusive office leasing assignment, and the project site lists two JLL contacts, Christopher T. Roeder and Charlie Hanafin, with direct telephone numbers and California licence numbers.
The Permit Step That Still Sits Open
The Department of Building Inspection file for block 3708, lot 055 carries permit 201510301303. It is a new-construction permit, filed on 30 October 2015 and issued on 5 July 2017. The estimated cost reads $520 million, and the description reads: to erect 60 stories, 4 basement, type ia, 109 units residential, office, retail building.
That permit belongs to the project Oceanwide stopped. It has never been finaled.
No new-construction permit for the Fifty at First design appears in the file. The most recent record on the lot is a street-space permit filed on 18 May 2020.
Figures the Record Has Not Settled
Height reads 913 feet in the opening line of the 13 October application report and 914 feet in its body. The 17 September rendering story gives 915 feet, and the project site also prints 915 feet.
Delivery reads 2030 on the project site and as early as 2031 at SF YIMBY. Construction is estimated at about $600 million, a figure SF YIMBY states is not inclusive of all development costs.
What an Owner Can Read From the File
The Financial District keeps 169 guest rooms in this record. They sit in a second tower with no start date, on a footprint proposed as interim open space, with no operator attached.
The first tower on the lot is office. A hotel developer watching this address has an entitlement and a park, and no construction schedule.