Master-Planned Communities Face Decade-Long Delays Despite Housing Crises
Soon, Five Point will break ground in September on Candlestick, a 270-acre master-planned community on the site of San Francisco’s demolished Candlestick Park stadium. The developer plans to start with seven blocks of infrastructure supporting roughly 675 homes, with the first phase expected to take two years. When complete, the project would include more than 7,200 homes, offices, shops and parks on land that has sat vacant since the stadium’s 2015 demolition.
Five Point will spend more than $130 million on phase one infrastructure, mostly upfront, before receiving reimbursement from future property-tax revenue increases. The city’s Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure said about $20 million will come from a Federal Highway Administration grant. The developer originally planned a retail-centered project tied to the neighboring Hunters Point Naval Shipyard redevelopment, but a 2018 fraud scandal involving the Navy’s radioactive cleanup and the collapse of mall economics forced a new vision in 2019.
San Francisco’s housing deficit reached an estimated 130,000 homes in 2024 according to Zillow, yet the site remained empty for more than a decade. The project sits beside a historically industrial neighborhood with lower-income and middle-income residents who have generally supported redevelopment promises of affordable housing and jobs. Five Point must attract both residential buyers—in a condo market that has recovered more slowly than rentals—and corporate tenants willing to locate more than 5 miles south of the city’s traditional office core.
Master-planned communities require developers to invest hundreds of millions in infrastructure before selling a single unit, making them vulnerable to market swings and interest-rate changes. Mission Bay, once considered fringe, has become an AI hub with OpenAI and Anthropic leasing large office blocks, and business leaders predict the tech boom will continue pushing the office market southward.
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