98 Battery St

Where 98 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

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

The typical floor has 451 ft of exterior wall, and across 6 residential floors the building carries 2,708 ft of it in total, divided among the 68 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is compact at 0.73: 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 11.3 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 98 Battery St scores 88 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 100, Interior depth 86, Scale 45, 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 45 out of 100: 68 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150.

Built in 1907

San Francisco records this building as going up in 1907, 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 90% daylight figure above deserves.

What the conversion would cost

$405 per square foot all-in across 71,066 sq ft of converted floor, or $28.8M in total — about $423K for each of the 68 homes.

That cost is charged across every converted square foot, including the 6,999 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 68 homes is $24.9M.

What would have to be true

A $3.9M gap before any grant, which the modeled $4.1M closes. What would reopen it soonest: circulation efficiency under 1% down.

The shortfall before any grant is $3.9M. Closing it from the value side means each of the 68 homes finishing at $423K rather than the $366K the model assumes — 16% more. Closing it from the cost side means getting all-in cost down from $405 to $350 per square foot.

A modeled RESIDE grant of $4.1M moves that threshold to $363K 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 98 Battery St:

All four are sliders in the survey, where 98 Battery St re-scores against your own numbers.

How it compares in Downtown San Francisco

98 Battery St ranks 93rd of the 205 buildings screened here, against a median score of 87.

Its floor plate is better lit than 53% of them, and shallower than 54% of them at its deepest interior point. On size it is the 151st 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

78th of 165 in Financial District/South Beach, 51st 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. 98 Battery St ranks 78th 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 45 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. 98 Battery St ranks 51st 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 45 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: 150 Minna St

The screened building closest to 98 Battery St in converted floor area is 150 Minna St: 71,639 sq ft over 6 stories, against 71,066 sq ft over 7 here.

The two land within a few points of each other — 88 here, 86 there — so at this size the screen reads them as much the same prospect. On the money they part ways: 150 Minna St falls short even with the modeled grant, while 98 Battery St pencils only with the modeled RESIDE grant. The two stand about 2,000 ft apart.

Would it qualify for a RESIDE Act grant?

The model awards 98 Battery St $4.1M, 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 98 Battery St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 140 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 140 ft away
• 100 Battery St
  7 stories · 90% daylit · 73 estimated homes · scores 90/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 150 ft away
• 40 Battery St
  38 stories · 79% daylit · 724 estimated homes · scores 68/100 (Worth a feasibility study)
  about 180 ft away
• 2 Battery St
  11 stories · 96% daylit · 77 estimated homes · scores 92/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 190 ft away