519 Powell St

Where 519 Powell 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

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

The typical floor has 495 ft of exterior wall, and across 8 residential floors the building carries 3,963 ft of it in total, divided among the 64 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is elongated at 0.39: 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 8.0 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 519 Powell St scores 91 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 100, Interior depth 100, Scale 43, 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 43 out of 100: 64 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150.

Built in 1914

San Francisco records this building as going up in 1914, 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 100% daylight figure above deserves.

What the conversion would cost

$405 per square foot all-in across 60,328 sq ft of converted floor, or $24.4M in total — about $382K for each of the 64 homes.

That cost is charged across every converted square foot, including the circulation and service area that earns nothing directly. Against it the model sets a completed value of $366K a home, which for 64 homes is $23.4M.

What would have to be true

A $1.0M gap before any grant, which the modeled $3.8M closes. What would reopen it soonest: circulation efficiency 10% down.

The shortfall before any grant is $1.0M. Closing it from the value side means each of the 64 homes finishing at $382K rather than the $366K the model assumes — 4% more. Closing it from the cost side means getting all-in cost down from $405 to $388 per square foot.

A modeled RESIDE grant of $3.8M moves that threshold to $322K 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 519 Powell St:

All four are sliders in the survey, where 519 Powell St re-scores against your own numbers.

How it compares in Downtown San Francisco

519 Powell St ranks 54th of the 205 buildings screened here, against a median score of 87.

Its floor plate is better lit than 100% of them, and shallower than 99% of them at its deepest interior point. On size it is the 157th 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 the C-3-R zone

6th of 25 zoned C-3-R — the comparison that shares its rules, rents and streets.

25 of the screened buildings are zoned C-3-R. 519 Powell St ranks 6th of them against a median score of 90. 21 score 70 or more, their median deepest interior point is 32 ft from a facade against this building’s 22 ft, and together they would hold an estimated 2,773 homes. The group’s top scorer is 870 Market St, at 100.

Its nearest match in size: 540 Montgomery St

The screened building closest to 519 Powell St in converted floor area is 540 Montgomery St: 58,619 sq ft over 10 stories, against 60,328 sq ft over 9 here.

The two land within a few points of each other — 91 here, 91 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 2,500 ft apart.

Would it qualify for a RESIDE Act grant?

The model awards 519 Powell St $3.8M, 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 519 Powell St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 310 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

• 440 Sutter St
  26 stories · 74% daylit · 466 estimated homes · scores 62/100 (Worth a feasibility study)
  about 310 ft away
• 350 Post St
  11 stories · 100% daylit · 95 estimated homes · scores 95/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 450 ft away
• 655 Sutter St
  6 stories · 100% daylit · 33 estimated homes · scores 88/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 680 ft away
• 301 Geary St
  8 stories · 100% daylit · 56 estimated homes · scores 91/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 840 ft away