San Francisco’s Power Station Site Swaps Hotel for Park

The former Potrero Power Station in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood is poised to become a waterfront hotspot.

Developer Enrique Landa, a managing partner at San Francisco-based Associate Capital, is spearheading the effort to transform the site with the mixed-use Power Station project. But his plan for a boutique hotel is being put on the back burner amid a languishing hospitality market in the city, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Instead, Landa wants to turn the planned hotel site at 420 23rd Street into a waterfront park while awaiting a market rebound.

“We thought: Why don’t we make this awesome?” said Landa. “Former industrial spaces make great places to be. Dogpatch has waited long enough.”

The so-called Prequel Park would be an interim “entertainment, arts and recreation” space that will open up the 2.75-acre stretch of the waterfront to the public for the first time in 160 years, according to the Chronicle.

The public space will come complete with gardens and play spaces, as well as a quarter-mile running and hiking track, a sports court and an outdoor 100-person amphitheater available for events. There will also be public restrooms on site.

First on the Power Station opening schedule is a 105-unit apartment building set to open in October. Associate Capital will also break ground across the street on a cancer treatment facility for the University of California, San Francisco later this year, expected to be finished in 2029.

Plans also include 2,601 homes, 1.6 million square feet of offices and research labs and 110,000 square feet of shops and restaurants. The canned hotel had plans for 250 rooms.

“As everyone knows, recreation and a place to gather is important to every neighborhood and the addition of more open space is a plus,” Landa said, hoping to inspire more development nearby with the new project. “People can’t really imagine a place until they’ve been there.”

— Chris Malone Méndez