The latest batch of homes is slated to open soon for residents on San Francisco's Treasure Island, a public-private project that officials say is serving as a playbook for mixed-income residential development in one of the country's most expensive cities.
Housing construction is booming on the artificial island, created out of 29 million cubic yards of sand and gravel that was dumped in the San Francisco Bay 90 years ago as the city hosted the World's Fair. In a new century, the island is again signaling a look to the future, this time in how to create in-demand urban housing at a variety of prices.
The building surge is coming even as other megaprojects have stalled in Greater San Francisco. More than 1,200 new homes are now finished or nearly there on the 400-acre island, connected to the city by bridge, as part of the Treasure Island Community Development project, including a 22-story luxury high rise and two affordable housing projects where residents have been trickling in since 2023.
That construction illustrates how, as housing costs surge across the United States, public officials and developers are getting creative to address the needs of those who can't afford rents. The number of cost-burdened renters is at a record high, according to a 2024 report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
“Treasure Island is the city's largest housing project underway in a moment when there is a tremendous push, not only to build new housing, but to boost economic activity, in San Francisco,” said San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey in a statement to CoStar News.
On Treasure Island, more than a quarter — 2,000 units — of the total new housing is earmarked as affordable, a tall order in the supply-strapped San Francisco Bay Area, where CoStar data shows rents currently average $3,118 per month, among the most expensive in the nation.
The latest development to begin leasing homes is Hawkins, a 178-unit complex that became available for renters last month. The building, complete with a pet spa and a rooftop terrace with hammocks and barbecue grills that looks out on an expensive and well-known skyline, has prices that range from $2,800 for a studio and north of $7,200 for three-bedroom units.
“It’s really building a brand-new San Francisco neighborhood from the ground up,” said Sherry Williams, an affordable housing advocate who has been involved with Treasure Island since the mid-1990s.
Transformation taking shape
Treasure Island has long been a canvas for San Francisco’s most ambitious dreams.
The World’s Fair venue was built in the 1930s to celebrate the recent completion of the Golden Gate and San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridges, and it became a U.S. Naval base during World War II. When the military left more than half a century later, proposals for Treasure Island’s future ranged from a theme park to a women’s prison.
Instead, San Francisco bought the island from the U.S. government for $105 million, and in 2011, the Board of Supervisors approved a $1.5 billion redevelopment plan to turn it and its much smaller neighbor, Yerba Buena Island, into a unique model of sustainable, mixed-income development for some 18,000 people wrapped in hundreds of acres of open space. Residents would have easy access to public transit and be within walking distance of shops and restaurants, a grocery store, a fire station and a school.
More than a decade later — after delays from lawsuits and a complex engineering operation that actually raised the island in places to guard against future sea-level rise — the vision is finally "becoming a reality," according to Chris Meany, a managing partner at Wilson Meany and co-CEO of Treasure Island Community Development.
The project, a partnership between the city of San Francisco and developers Wilson Meany, Stockbridge Capital Group and Lennar, ultimately aims to transform the island with 8,000 new residences, 300 acres of new parks and a mix of retail and office space, satisfying about 10% of San Francisco’s goal of building 82,000 housing units by 2031 as part of its plan to meet state-mandated requirements to help solve California’s housing shortage.
“We have housing for the formerly homeless at Treasure Island, and we also have homes that are some of the most expensive in the Bay Area — and those people are going to live as neighbors," said Meany, adding: "That is a model we should embrace."
He acknowledged there are limitations to the project's ability to serve as a precise blueprint. Even so, some planners say, the concept could serve as inspiration elsewhere across the United States.
As a model, "it's such a unique set of circumstances," said Jasper Rubin, an urban planning professor at San Francisco State University. "But it shows it's possible, with some creativity, to produce sustainable developments in other places."
Tenants trickle in
The 105-unit Maceo May apartment complex became the first new building to open on Treasure Island in 2023, with backing from the city and San Francisco-based nonprofit groups Swords to Plowshares and the Chinatown Community Development Center, prioritizing housing for formerly homeless veterans. Another 100% affordable project, Star View Court, opened this year with 138 homes reserved for other residents earning less than 60% of the area median income as well as some 600 residents who lived on the island before, mostly in old military housing.
At the other end of the spectrum, Isle House, a 22-story, 250-unit luxury apartment tower, opened in September, featuring units with floor-to-ceiling windows to take advantage of the 360-degree views of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge and fancy touches such as “modern Shou Sugi Ban-style walls, white oak millwork banquette seating,” private co-working suites and a yoga studio overlooking the bay.
To be completed sometime next year is 490 Avenue of the Palms, with market-rate condominiums for sale. A small community of homeowners has gradually been moving into 124 condominiums and 14 multilevel, single-family homes on neighboring Yerba Buena Island, a natural, 147-acre steep, rocky outcropping that’s connected to Treasure Island by a short causeway.
Earlier this year, Mayor London Breed and County Supervisor Matt Dorsey introduced legislation to fast-track financing for the second phase of the development with $115 million from the city’s general fund to pay for more housing as well as a 240-bed behavioral health center and restoration of historical buildings, among other things.
In deliberate contrast to the single-family suburban sprawl long associated with California’s housing crisis, the Treasure Island master plan drawn up by architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill envisioned a dense, mixed-use community of multifamily housing across “three compact neighborhoods oriented around public transportation and open space — layout intended to encourage walking, bicycling and using mass transit,” according to the project description.
The Treasure Island development aimed to create a successful mixed-income community that would provide “a lot of things for everyone,” according to Williams, the former director of the nonprofit Treasure Island Homeless Development Initiative, now called One Treasure Island.
Retail development
By early 2025, the island is expected to feature seven new parks, including a seaside promenade, along with new roads and bike lanes, adding to a handful of restaurants that have been operating on the island for several years.
Alongside the construction vehicles and cranes, there’s now a brewery, a grocery store, a pickleball court, a yacht harbor, a jobs center and the small Treasure Island Museum, where visitors can learn about the island's history.
In September, Bay FC, a women’s professional soccer team representing the Bay Area, announced it would build a new training facility on Treasure Island that’s set to open in 2027. Ferry service opened in 2022, adding another transportation method between the island and downtown San Francisco.
In San Francisco as in other cities across the country, high land and construction costs, restrictive zoning laws, permitting delays and pushback from anti-development groups have held back the construction of badly needed housing.
Officials have acknowledged that San Francisco is falling woefully short of its goals to create more housing development as the city continues to struggle from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just over 1,200 units have been completed so far in 2024, according to the city. That is about half the 2,618 new homes built in 2023 and well below the boom years of 2016 through 2021, when San Francisco saw as many 5,250 new units built annually.
“The San Francisco Bay Area is set to end 2024 with a decade-low new multifamily units under construction,” according to a recent CoStar analysis, which explained that construction has still not bounced back ever since the pandemic reduced renter demand as residents and workers left the city.
Officials including Breed and others have sought to promote new housing development in the city by cutting red tape and easing zoning restrictions, among other measures.