A half-acre surface parking lot at the corner of 3rd and Harrison streets in San Francisco's SoMa district is now the site of preliminary permits for a 45-story residential tower with 501 apartments, a jump from earlier versions of the project that topped out at 37 floors. The refiled plans call for a 480-foot building with 51 units set aside as deed-restricted affordable housing for very low-income households, alongside ground-level retail and a seven-story parking podium.
According to San Francisco YIMBY, the application from project sponsor Strada Investment Group invokes Senate Bill 423 and the State Density Bonus Law to streamline city review and push residential capacity above what base zoning would normally allow. The site last sold for $34 million in 2021, the outlet reports, and the project would yield roughly 608,500 square feet total, including about 468,500 square feet of housing, 3,600 square feet of ground-floor retail, and 108,510 square feet devoted to parking. The design includes 58 studios, 287 one-bedroom units, and 105 two-bedroom apartments, with 239 bicycle spaces and a garage built for 150 cars featuring perforated metal screening for airflow, per the same outlet's report. No estimated construction cost or timeline has been established for the project, the site notes.
A Tower That Keeps Growing
The project has taken a winding path since Strada first floated it in April 2021 as a $200 million, 35-story tower with 559 apartments and basement parking, designed at the time by Solomon Cordwell Buenz, according to San Francisco YIMBY's reporting on the original submission. That early version included roughly 115 affordable units. By November 2024, the developer had filed modified plans scaling the building up to 37 stories and 416 feet, this time citing a 50% State Density Bonus request and seeking local waivers on open space and unit mix within the Central SoMa plan area, the outlet reported at the time. By 2025, the design had shifted again to 37 floors with 53 inclusionary units before arriving at the current 45-story, 501-unit proposal with 51 affordable units. Henning Larsen and Multistudio have since taken over as the project's joint architects, replacing the original design team.
Henning Larsen modeled the tower's facade on California's coastal redwoods, using molded pre-cast glass fiber-reinforced concrete panels accented with brass and single- and double-bay inset balconies meant to evoke the distinct vertical zones of a redwood forest, the outlet reported in June 2023. The proposed tower is 480 feet tall. Future residents would be about ten minutes from the 4th and Brannan Muni light-rail station and a ten-minute walk from Market Street.
State Law Versus Local Discretion
The streamlining tools Strada is using trace back to California Senate Bill 423, enacted in 2023 to extend and expand the earlier SB 35 through 2036. The law grants ministerial, fast-tracked approval to qualifying mixed-income residential developments, bypassing conditional use permits and CEQA environmental review for projects that meet objective planning and labor standards, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development. The law applies automatically in cities that fall behind state-mandated housing targets. San Francisco's Regional Housing Needs Allocation for 2023 through 2031 requires the city to demonstrate planning capacity for 82,069 new residential units, including more than 46,000 designated as affordable to low- and moderate-income households, per the San Francisco Planning Department, and a shortfall subjects the city to mandatory state-level streamlining.
Strada has leaned on state housing statutes elsewhere in the city as well. In March 2026, the developer invoked SB 330 to advance a 23-story, 619-unit proposal at 555 Beale Street, directly testing whether state law can override San Francisco's 2014 voter-approved Proposition B waterfront height limits without a new ballot measure, since Proposition B otherwise requires citywide approval for waterfront height increases.
A Site Layered With History
The 395 3rd Street lot carries civic weight beyond its zoning file. Former Mayor London Breed chose the site in September 2023 to sign the city's Housing Stimulus and Fee Reform Plan into law, using the stalled parking lot to illustrate legislation meant to spur housing construction by temporarily lowering inclusionary requirements and deferring impact fees. The historic ground at 349 Third Street was the site of a 19th-century Chinese-owned laundry that sparked the 1886 U.S. Supreme Court case Yick Wo v. Hopkins, which established that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment applies to non-citizens facing discriminatory law enforcement. As Hoodline reported in its coverage of the case's 140th anniversary, city officials and Chinatown heritage groups gathered at the lot in May to mark the occasion, and community members have called for permanent historical markers to be incorporated into the eventual tower. Whether those calls will shape the final design remains an open question.
Betting on an AI-Driven Rebound
Strada's pitch for the tower rests partly on how quickly its other SoMa project has leased up. Quincy, the developer's 16-story, 501-unit luxury apartment tower in SoMa, opened in May 2025 and leased half its units within two months, a pace Strada has cited as evidence of returning demand from Bay Area AI workers. Quincy went on to win a 2026 CoStar Impact Award for its execution, and Hoodline previously detailed how the project fueled talk of an AI-driven housing revival in the neighborhood. Strada is the developer behind the project. Beyond San Francisco, the firm has recently expanded its regional footprint.
No cost estimate or construction timeline has been established for 395 3rd Street, and it remains unclear how the project will be financed or when the developer expects to break ground. For now, the half-acre lot at 3rd and Harrison remains a parking lot, with its future shaped by a mix of state housing law, shifting design ambitions, and a history that predates the tower by more than a century.
