An office-to-residential redevelopment project in San Mateo is contributing to the city’s efforts to meet state housing requirements. O’Farrell Development and DNA Design and Architecture have proposed an 87-unit apartment building at 1919 O’Farrell Street, according to the San Francisco Business Times. The project will transform a site currently occupied by a low-rise office building and surface parking into a seven-story complex with one- and two-bedroom units, as well as a rooftop deck.
The shift from office space to residential use comes amid reduced demand for offices in San Mateo and increased need for housing. About 20 percent of the city’s office space is considered functionally obsolete, which could lead to more demolitions in the future. Under its housing element, San Mateo is required to add 7,015 new homes by 2031.
Similar redevelopments are taking place throughout the Peninsula. Earlier this year, Presidio Bay Ventures purchased the former U.S. Geological Survey campus in Menlo Park for $137 million. The property includes 17 buildings on 17.4 acres and is expected to be converted from office, research, and laboratory space into housing.
Last month, Harvest Properties acquired Clearview Business Park in San Mateo for $102 million. This 22-acre site contains nearly 380,000 square feet of office space slated for conversion into residential units—the largest such redevelopment proposed in the Peninsula this year.
Despite these projects, new apartment construction has slowed significantly across the Bay Area. Apartment starts have dropped from more than 3,000 per quarter to only a few hundred recently. Nationally, there were just over half a million units under construction at the end of the second quarter of this year—the lowest figure in ten years—according to RealPage data cited by the Business Times.
Developers are slowing or halting projects due to high borrowing costs and expensive labor and materials.
Some cities on the Peninsula are still seeing activity in multifamily development. In Daly City, construction began on its first market-rate apartment project in fifteen years—a planned 214-unit complex replacing a former Burlington Coat Factory at Westlake Shopping Center. South San Francisco is also experiencing increased construction as mixed-use developments become more popular among developers and residents.
“Office-to-residential redevelopments are becoming common across the Peninsula.”
