# One of S.F.’s biggest developments is changing its plans — but not its biggest promise **By:** Laura Waxmann, Staff Writer **Published:** 2026-07-29T23:58:06Z **Source:** [San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle](https://www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/article/one-s-f-s-biggest-developments-changing-plans-22365461.php) --- Construction continues on the Potrero Power Station site, shown in 2025, but developers are asking for changes to the entitlements to help make the project feasible. Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle In the years leading up to the 2020 approval of a massive future neighborhood planned on an industrial site along the Central Waterfront, San Francisco’s planners and the project’s developer tried to anticipate nearly every aspect of the Dogpatch Power Station — including a rule limiting the entire 29-acre development to a single rooftop bar. Six years later, that seemingly trivial restriction has become a symbol of a much larger challenge: Development agreements are written to create certainty for neighborhoods that take decades to build, but the assumptions behind them can become outdated in a matter of years. The Power Station’s agreement locked in details ranging from commercial uses to affordable housing delivery in a world that existed just before COVID-19 upended construction costs, financing and office demand.  On Thursday, the San Francisco Planning Commission considered developer Fifth Space’s request to amend the Power Station’s agreement with the city, including eliminating the rooftop bar cap and making a list of other changes affecting commercial uses, affordable housing delivery, and building design and heights. The developer, formerly known as Associate Capital, says the amendments are needed to keep the project moving — not to renegotiate its underlying commitments. “This is about momentum. Since Power Station was entitled, we have not stopped,” Enrique Landa, Fifth Space’s managing partner, said about the requested changes. “We have learned a lot over the last six years, and the lesson is pretty simple: Greater flexibility gets buildings built.” A rendering of the Potrero Power Station development, from plans from 2025.  Heatherwick Studio The project has already constructed much of the infrastructure that will support the new neighborhood, broken ground on the 105-unit Sophie Maxwell affordable housing development and will welcome UCSF to the site, once a new research facility, now under construction, is completed. But as it prepares for the next phase of homes, commercial buildings and parks, Fifth Space argues it needs to remain nimble to respond to today’s economic realities while keeping its core promises intact, including building roughly 2,600 homes and a commitment to make 30% of them affordable.  The proposed changes would not reduce the project’s overall affordable housing requirement, though they would adjust income levels for some affordable units and provide more discretion in how affordable housing is designed and delivered. The developer is also requesting to defer the payment of certain fees associated with housing construction until occupancy certificates are issued. “Affordable housing is the most important commitment we made to the community, and I would sooner change almost anything else than walk away from it,” Landa said. For decades, the site was defined by the hulking infrastructure of the former power Potrero Power Plant, including the 300-foot industrial smokestack visible from highways, hillsides and the bay. Today, roads and sidewalks have replaced dirt lots and utilities have been installed to support a new mixed-use neighborhood. The transformation includes the adaptive reuse of Building A, a historic power station structure that is being preserved and given new life as part of the project rather than demolished. The income-restricted Sophie Maxwell building has also welcomed residents to the site, and is now about 90% leased, marking one of the first signs that the Power Station is becoming a community rather than just a construction site. Meanwhile, construction is moving ahead on UCSF’s Clinical and Life Sciences Building, where crews have poured the foundation more than 65 feet below ground. The facility, expected to open in phases beginning in 2028, will bring UCSF clinical care, research space, a life sciences incubator and a proton beam therapy center to the waterfront site, making it one of the project’s first major institutional anchors. But the next stages of the project will be built in a very different environment than the one that shaped its original approval.  Many major development projects, including at Pier 70 and projects in Central SoMa and on Treasure Island, have returned to City Hall since the pandemic to revisit the economics of deals struck before 2020. Some have sought to reduce affordable housing obligations or delay community benefits. A rendering of the Potrero Power Station development at night, from plans in 2025. Heatherwick Studio These efforts highlight the current challenges that San Francisco’s largest projects face while moving from entitlement to construction. Development agreements are meant to give developers confidence that approved development rules will remain in place while committing them to fund public infrastructure, parks and other negotiated benefits on certain timelines.  But the pandemic exposed the limits of trying to lock in detailed assumptions about construction, commercial demand and neighborhood uses years before the buildings are complete. The collapse in demand for downtown office space has forced developers to rethink commercial projects, while rising construction costs and higher borrowing costs have made financing new housing increasingly difficult even as San Francisco faces severe housing needs.  Landa, of Fifth Space, said approval for the Power Station’s original development plan came as the lockdown was announced. The approval was for 1.6 million square feet of commercial space, 2,600 homes, infrastructure and 6 acres of park, a 250-room waterfront hotel and 100,000 square feet of retail. “Six years later, we have a handful of changes to our development agreement in order to make it easier for us to implement the project,” he said. Those changes include providing two sites where a residential and a commercial building are planned — Block 5 and Block 12, respectively — with the flexibility to become either.  “What we are seeing is that the (tenants) who are interested in expanding right now are people who are creating the future,” Landa said. “Their office buildings look a little bit like laboratories, like R&D spaces, like offices. So we have made it possible on all of our commercial parcels to be able to do all PDR, all offices, all life sciences or all labs, in order to truly be a flexible site and meet the needs of tomorrow.”  Block 5, entitled as a residential building, could become a “small data center,” if that’s what future tenants require, Landa said. The idea, Landa said, is to create a “super lab” — a production and testing facility where engineers can work alongside the teams building new chips and technology rather than operating in separate locations. The developer is also requesting a modification that would allow the entire parcel to become Production, Distribution, Repair, or PDR, space. Fifth Space is also seeking to increase the maximum height of future residential buildings by up to eight feet. The added height would provide about four extra inches per floor for HVAC and other building systems, making the housing less expensive to construct, Landa said. The tallest residential tower would be permitted to reach 248 feet.  Three commercial buildings — planned on Block 12, Block 11 and Station A, the former power station building that anchors the site and is slated for adaptive reuse — could grow by 23, 15 and 30 feet, respectively. The reason is to make what are planned as “smaller floorplate buildings” in comparison with the project’s other commercial structures “more attractive to tenants,” Landa said. Together, the changes would increase the permitted height of the project’s commercial component by roughly 20%.  Rather than increasing the project’s housing requirement outright, the amendments would give Fifth Space more discretion over how the site is ultimately built. If market demand favors housing over commercial space, the project could deliver more homes than currently planned. The developer is also seeking permission to offer up to 200 Intermediate Length Occupancy units — a type of furnished, medium-term housing intended for stays of at least 30 days — without counting toward the city’s existing cap on those units.   The San Francisco Planning Department has already recommended approval for the changes requested by Fifth Space. If the planning commission agrees, the modifications will head to the Board of Supervisors for review.