Plans for the nine-story Warfield Building are shifting from residential to cultural conversion at 988 Market Street in San Francisco’s Mid-Market neighborhood. Community Arts Stabilization Trust and KALW Public Media have made a joint announcement sharing plans to turn the historic building into a hub for arts and journalism dubbed Warfield Commons. Group I had previously pursued a conversion of the Warfield Group into housing.
CAST and KALW purchased the Warfield Building late last week from Group I for $7.3 million. Group I had owned the building since 2011, oversaw a significant restoration of the building in 2013, and garnered headlines in 2022 after filing plans for a partial office-to-housing conversion. At the time, the project was heralded as the first such conversion to be proposed in San Francisco in the wake of record-high office vacancy rates.
988 Market Street conceptual office interior, image courtesy CAST San Francisco
CAST is now the majority owner of the building and will serve as the property and asset manager. The group will occupy one floor for office space and supportive facilities for arts. KALW will occupy 11,000 square feet across two floors. Their facilities will include new broadcast studios, offices, classrooms, and training spaces for educators, formerly incarcerated, and other journalism professionals. The remaining space is expected to be leased out to more local media and literary organizations.
In a public statement, CAST CEO Ken Ikeda emphasized the significance of the Warfield Commons for their mission, stating, “Journalism, storytelling and the arts have been identified as threats because they are so vital to establishing cultural narratives and understanding. We must continue to lift them up.”
Speaking to the financial challenges CAST faced, Ikeda shared that “these are the buildings that nonprofits lose out on for lack of finances, ready tenants, or complicated partnerships… We’ve experienced first-hand rejection even with proof of funds because nonprofits are seen as unsustainable. This simply isn’t true. KALW is 83 years old and has never been stronger.
The nine-story structure yields around 48,300 square feet. The residential conversion plans would have brought 45 apartments across levels five through nine. Group I’s plans would retain office space in the lower levels.
988 Market Street, image via Google Street View
KALW is an educational NPR member station licensed by the San Francisco Unified School District with coverage across the Bay Area. The station started broadcasting in San Francisco in 1941. In a public comment, KALW Executive Director James Kass shared that, “KALW is from here and we will stay here. The Warfield Commons is a chance for people from the Bay Area to tell the real stories of their communities, coming from the heart of the City.”
Next to the Warfield Building is Warfield Theater, a 2,300-seat venue contributing to the city’s Theater District. The venue was built in 1922 and continues to host high-profile musicians to this day.
The San Francisco Community Investment Fund, a non-profit financial institution operated by the City and County of San Francisco, has committed $17 million for the Warfield Commons.
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Another epic fail from San Francisco’s developer community! Infamous local flipper and building industry impresario Angus McCarthy’s proposed conversion of the 116-year old building at 1088 Sansome St. to 112 dwelling units and about 15,000 ft.² of retail on the ground floor was proposed after this project, but failed to break ground sooner.
If they don’t start on converting all that vacant office space into housing after the bending over backwards that planning and The Board of Supervisors have done over the last two years to facilitate office to residential conversions, when will they?
“Bending over backwards” is just political theater – Hard to blame developers when the Board, the Mayor, and every self-interested neighborhood group (Peskin’s wife included) all get a veto before a single shovel hits the ground
You haven’t been keeping up with current events. State Senate Bill 423 (signed into law in 2023) eliminates local discretionary review and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) studies and also provides for ministerial approval process for multifamily housing developments. So the Board, the Mayor, and every self-interested neighborhood group (including Peskin’s wife) wouldn’t even be notified in advance of the project seeking permits.
It bears mentioning that the current Mayor and the last one are both pro-development. To a fault. Former Mayor Breed co-sponsored the legislation (with Supervisor Matt Dorsey) to waive development impact fees and inclusionary housing requirements for office to housing projects as part of her plan to revitalize Downtown. Last Fall’s AB 2488 (“Downtown revitalization and economic recovery financing districts”) a State Legislature bill championed by Mayor Breed (introduced by Phil Ting), enabled San Francisco to establish a special financing district to support commercial-to-residential conversion projects in Downtown, starting this year.
In short, both the City and State have completely capitulated to the desires of developers, and the feckless folks in the private sector S.F. housing development “game” still can’t get their hands off their hips and start building.
Huge win for the city.
Art centers like these always fail to produce good art. What you need to do is incentivize creative industries.
Good art is produced when housing costs are low. If SF even built 5,000 units per year for the next 20 years, we’d be in such an awesome place. SF would be incredible at about double the density it currently is.
I agree. Angry activist art is incredibly boring. Hopefully with cheap housing they can create more interesting art
What are you even talking about? This makes no sense.