Let the Finishes Begin: Dome Resoration, Structural Steel Phases Completed for San Francisco Centre

Construction of the $420 million, 1.1-million-sq.-ft. San Francisco Centre enters its final year. The project includes a new, 338,000-sq.-ft. Bloomingdale's store, 245,000 sq. ft. of office space and a Century Theatre cineplex.

By Robert Carlsen

With the century-old, 500,000-lb. Emporium dome back in place atop a new steel structure, Westfield's San Francisco Centre is now sprinting to a September finish date.

When completed, the $420 million project, a partnership of developers Westfield Group of Los Angeles and Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises, will be the largest urban shopping center west of the Mississippi. Located on Market and Mission streets between Fourth and Fifth streets, the new 1-million-sq.-ft. center connects on five levels to the existing 500,000-sq.-ft. San Francisco Centre and adds a West Coast flagship Bloomingdale's to the mix as well as a nine-screen Century Theatre complex.

Steve Eimer, vice president of development at Westfield, said the erection of the structural steel was completed this summer, and the building is enclosed. Now the interior finishes begin.

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"We are especially proud of the building crews' painstaking and intricate work to restore the historic dome and the Market Street Beaux-Arts façade, circa 1908," Eimer said. "These are going to be the eye-popping signature features of the centre."

Added Barry Widen, Westfield's senior project manager, about the level of the work performed by the subcontractors: "It'd be great to bottle up this entire crew and take them from project to project. They are the best of the best."

Westfield Construction, a unit of the Westfield Group, is the project's general contractor while KA Architects of Cleveland is the executive architect and provided working drawings. The Los Angeles office of RTKL Associates Inc. designed the retail, entertainment and office portions. New York-based Kohn Pederson Fox Associates is the design architect for the exterior façade of Bloomingdale's.

Lifting the 100-ft.-wide historic dome from the existing Emporium department store building prior to demolition took place in May 2004. That project-within-a-project took several years of preparation and planning by Westfield and San Francisco-based Swinerton Builders and Sheedy Drayage Co. The restored dome, which was returned to the site in April, now sits 168 ft. above Market Street, having been elevated 58 ft. to the roof of the new structure to allow natural light through its crown and lunette windows.

The restored dome is the centerpiece of a 200-ft.-long, 45-ft.-wide atrium and promenade.

Crews working on the Market Street façade removed old paint on the sandstone and brick, and made necessary repairs. Painting took place this summer. The new center will extend to a new Mission Street façade, which connects the building to the Yerba Buena Center and the Moscone Convention Center.

The new five-story, 338,000-sq.-ft. Bloomingdale's store will face Mission Street with a glass curtain wall.

"The new center also adheres to strict seismic and life-safety standards, which since the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes have been implemented throughout California for new building design and construction," Eimer said.

And even though the city's office vacancy level is in the 18 percent range, the 245,000 sq. ft. of new office space in the center will be the only Class A space coming on-line in San Francisco in 2006. The space is located on the Market Street side on floors five to eight.

"Our focus is on investing in sound assets for the long-term, regardless of economic cycles," Eimer added.

"The timing of our grand opening is good. Retail is strong and the office market is rebounding. We've already had significant interest."