40 Battery St

Where 40 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

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

The typical floor has 817 ft of exterior wall, and across 37 residential floors the building carries 30,231 ft of it in total, divided among the 724 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is elongated at 0.44: a slab or an L, which is why so much of the floor lies within reach of a window: the outline buys daylight that a square plan of the same area would not. How window line and plate shape are measured.

At the model’s 750 sq ft average, the plan works out at about 19.6 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 40 Battery St scores 68 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 79, Interior depth 31, Scale 100, Finance 66 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Most of what it earns comes from daylight efficiency, and what holds it back most is interior depth, at 31 out of 100: deepest interior point 68 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft.

Built in 1981

San Francisco records this building as going up in 1981, which puts it in the late-modern stock.

As a rule, typically the hardest to convert: the deepest plates of any era, large central cores, and floor-to-floor heights tight enough that running residential drainage under a ceiling can be the thing that ends a project. 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 79% daylight figure above deserves.

What the conversion would cost

$405 per square foot all-in across 855,929 sq ft of converted floor, or $346.7M in total — about $479K for each of the 724 homes.

That cost is charged across every converted square foot, including the 176,793 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 724 homes is $265.0M.

What would have to be true

A $81.7M gap before any grant, $71.7M after the modeled one. The smallest single change that would close it: average unit size 21% down.

The shortfall before any grant is $81.7M. Closing it from the value side means each of the 724 homes finishing at $479K rather than the $366K the model assumes — 31% more. Closing it from the cost side means getting all-in cost down from $405 to $310 per square foot.

A modeled RESIDE grant of $10.0M moves that threshold to $465K a home. That is still above the $366K assumed, leaving $71.7M uncovered, which is why the grant does not unlock this one.

Nor do all four levers have to move. For 40 Battery St, one alone would close the gap at:

All four are sliders in the survey, where 40 Battery St re-scores against your own numbers.

How it compares in Downtown San Francisco

40 Battery St ranks 154th of the 205 buildings screened here, against a median score of 87.

Its floor plate is better lit than 30% of them, and shallower than 15% of them at its deepest interior point. On size it is the 7th 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

125th of 165 in Financial District/South Beach, 79th 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. 40 Battery St ranks 125th 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 68 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. 40 Battery St ranks 79th 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 68 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: 50 California St

The screened building closest to 40 Battery St in converted floor area is 50 California St: 899,254 sq ft over 37 stories, against 855,929 sq ft over 38 here.

40 Battery St scores 68 to its 61, and with the size held roughly equal most of that lead comes from daylight efficiency: 79 out of 100 here, 67 there (73% of the floor area within 35 ft of a facade, scored from 40% up to 90%). On the money they sit in the same place: each falls short even with the modeled grant. The two stand about 900 ft apart.

Would it qualify for a RESIDE Act grant?

The model awards 40 Battery St $10.0M, 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 40 Battery St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 130 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

• 31 Front St
  19 stories · 89% daylit · 212 estimated homes · scores 95/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 130 ft away
• 2 Battery St
  11 stories · 96% daylit · 77 estimated homes · scores 92/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 160 ft away
• 98 Battery St
  7 stories · 90% daylit · 68 estimated homes · scores 88/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 180 ft away
• 100 Pine St
  33 stories · 83% daylit · 396 estimated homes · scores 81/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 300 ft away