2 Battery St

Where 2 Battery St is

Its block in Downtown San Francisco, drawn from San Francisco's own building outlines and street centerlines.

The plan: window line, shape and floor rhythm

45 ft of exterior wall for each home the screen estimates — enough for two- and three-bedroom homes across the plan.

The typical floor has 348 ft of exterior wall, and across 10 residential floors the building carries 3,478 ft of it in total, divided among the 77 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is compact at 0.78: close to a square or a circle, the most efficient envelope an office can have and the least generous one for apartments: little perimeter to divide among homes. How window line and plate shape are measured.

At the model’s 750 sq ft average, the plan works out at about 7.7 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 2 Battery St scores 92 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 100, Interior depth 97, Scale 51, Finance 100 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Most of what it earns comes from daylight efficiency, and what holds it back most is scale, at 51 out of 100: 77 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150.

Built in 1908

San Francisco records this building as going up in 1908, which puts it in the pre-1920 stock.

As a rule, the era that converts most readily: load-bearing masonry, small floor plates laid out before deep-plan offices were possible, operable windows and generous floor-to-floor heights. The usual obstacles are not daylight but hazardous materials, lifts and bringing structure up to current code. That is the era’s general tendency rather than a finding about this building — the model reads an outline and a height, and can see nothing inside — but it is the first thing an architect would want to know, and it colours how much confidence the 96% daylight figure above deserves.

What the conversion would cost

$405 per square foot all-in across 75,345 sq ft of converted floor, or $30.5M in total — about $396K for each of the 77 homes.

That cost is charged across every converted square foot, including the 2,658 sq ft of windowless core, which has to be gutted, seismically braced and sprinklered like the rest of the building and then earns nothing. Against it the model sets a completed value of $366K a home, which for 77 homes is $28.2M.

What would have to be true

A $2.3M gap before any grant, which the modeled $4.6M closes. What would reopen it soonest: circulation efficiency 7% down.

The shortfall before any grant is $2.3M. Closing it from the value side means each of the 77 homes finishing at $396K rather than the $366K the model assumes — 8% more. Closing it from the cost side means getting all-in cost down from $405 to $374 per square foot.

A modeled RESIDE grant of $4.6M moves that threshold to $336K a home. That is below the assumed value, which is why this building counts as unlocked by the grant — subject to it qualifying under the law's vacant-and-abandoned test, which this data cannot show.

Each of these, moved on its own, would be enough to undo that for 2 Battery St:

All four are sliders in the survey, where 2 Battery St re-scores against your own numbers.

How it compares in Downtown San Francisco

2 Battery St ranks 49th of the 205 buildings screened here, against a median score of 87.

Its floor plate is better lit than 63% of them, and shallower than 60% of them at its deepest interior point. On size it is the 139th largest by estimated homes. The full survey of all 205 buildings ranks and maps every one of them, and the list by address links each to its own page.

Within Financial District/South Beach and the C-3-O zone

46th of 165 in Financial District/South Beach, 31st of 88 zoned C-3-O — the comparison that shares its rules, rents and streets.

San Francisco places 165 of the screened buildings in Financial District/South Beach. 2 Battery St ranks 46th of them against a median score of 88. 121 score 70 or more, their median deepest interior point is 47 ft from a facade against this building’s 41 ft, and together they would hold an estimated 40,456 homes. The group’s top scorer is 870 Market St, at 100.

88 of the screened buildings are zoned C-3-O. 2 Battery St ranks 31st of them against a median score of 89. 76 score 70 or more, their median deepest interior point is 44 ft from a facade against this building’s 41 ft, and together they would hold an estimated 21,444 homes. The group’s top scorer is 266 Bush St, at 100.

Its nearest match in size: 417 Montgomery St

The screened building closest to 2 Battery St in converted floor area is 417 Montgomery St: 75,765 sq ft over 10 stories, against 75,345 sq ft over 11 here.

The two land within a few points of each other — 92 here, 93 there — so at this size the screen reads them as much the same prospect. On the money they sit in the same place: each pencils only with the modeled RESIDE grant. The two stand about 1,300 ft apart.

Would it qualify for a RESIDE Act grant?

The model awards 2 Battery St $4.6M, on the assumption it qualifies. Whether it does, no published dataset can say.

That figure assumes the building meets the Act’s vacant-and-abandoned test, which turns on code-enforcement and receivership records no city publishes.

It does not sit in a 2018 designated Opportunity Zone, so it would not draw that Section 201 priority.

Other buildings screened near 2 Battery St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 160 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

• 40 Battery St
  38 stories · 79% daylit · 724 estimated homes · scores 68/100 (Worth a feasibility study)
  about 160 ft away
• 98 Battery St
  7 stories · 90% daylit · 68 estimated homes · scores 88/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 190 ft away
• 31 Front St
  19 stories · 89% daylit · 212 estimated homes · scores 95/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 250 ft away
• 1 Bush St
  19 stories · 99% daylit · 327 estimated homes · scores 100/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 280 ft away