Master-Planned Megaproject Breaks Ground After Decade of Bay Area Delay
Five Point will break ground in September on Candlestick, a 270-acre master-planned community on the site of San Francisco’s demolished baseball stadium. The first phase includes infrastructure for seven blocks supporting roughly 675 homes, with completion expected in two years. The full buildout calls for more than 7,200 homes plus offices, shops and parks. Five Point will spend over $130 million on initial infrastructure, with most costs reimbursed over time through increased property-tax revenue and about $20 million from a Federal Highway Administration grant.
The site sat vacant for more than a decade while metro San Francisco’s housing deficit grew to an estimated 130,000 homes in 2024, according to Zillow. The developer points to fast-rising rents, falling vacancy below 4%, and a pickup in office leasing as evidence the market has turned. Five Point also cites Mayor Daniel Lurie’s pro-business agenda and the artificial-intelligence boom as tailwinds. The project’s tortured path included a scrapped retail-centered plan after e-commerce upended mall economics and a 2018 fraud scandal derailed the neighboring Hunters Point Naval Shipyard redevelopment.
Five Point envisions Candlestick as a corporate campus more than 5 miles south of San Francisco’s traditional office core, a bet that companies will follow the AI boom’s southward push. Mission Bay, once considered fringe, now hosts OpenAI and Anthropic in large office blocks. Citizens Bank’s California president says young technology workers prefer living and working in the city over commuting to Sunnyvale. The condominium market has recovered more slowly than apartments, with prices improving but not yet reaching prepandemic highs.
Master-planned communities of this scale often take decades to complete because developers must fund hundreds of millions in infrastructure before selling a single home, making projects vulnerable to swings in real-estate markets and interest rates. Created in 2009 by a group led by Lennar, Five Point secures entitlements, installs infrastructure, and prepares sites it sells to residential and commercial developers. The company is also redeveloping the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine, California, into a 2,100-acre community. One lingering question is Candlestick’s notorious weather, with meteorologist Jan Null predicting cool Pacific air will continue creating gusty conditions despite the stadium’s demolition.
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