Organized Labor

Foundry Square Building 1 is a commercial office building going up at First and Howard Street in downtown San Francisco. The concrete structure will consist of 10 floors of office space totaling 327,462 square feet with an 11th floor Mechanical Space of 11,637 square feet and two levels of below grade parking for more than 270 vehicles. Building plans also include ground-floor retail space.

Keith Buchignani, a member of Laborers Local 291 and safety inspector for the project said that there were about 20 laborers on the job. In early February he said that the cement pouring was about three-fourths completed, up to Level 8. Concrete pouring is on an eleven-day cycle.

Eric Thatcher, the Superintendent at the Foundry Square I project for Webcor Concrete, and a member of Carpenters Local 217, said that work was being completed on schedule. Currently there are from 20 to 25 carpenters, two or three cement masons and four operating engineers on the all-union job. Members of the plumbers, electricians, and other trades are also working there.

There are nine sub-contractors working in the lower levels. Installation of the building’s plant-precast architectural concrete panels was set to begin in mid February. Webcor reported that the first delivery of the curtain wall system, which includes glass for Levels 1 through 3, was delivered in January. The new building will be the third of four 10-story office buildings fronting First and Howard streets downtown. The new building will feature an undulating metal roof supported by structural steel similar to the other two buildings in the Foundry Square complex.

Foundry Square Building I will be the new headquarters of Barclays Global Investors when it is completed in December 2007. Barclays has been based in San Francisco since 1971 and has more than 1,000 employees in the area. Its headquarters is currently located in 45 Fremont Street, a 34-story, 580,000-square-foot office tower owned by Shorenstein and MetLife.

The site is owned by Equity Office Properties; the architect is STUDIOS Architecture; and Nishkian Menninger is the engineering firm. According to the architects, Foundry Square I is the first development in San Francisco to feature a double glass curtainwall and includes other sustainable elements such as underfloor air and integral shading systems. The thick concrete frame also serves as a passive heating and cooling mass.

Equity Office Properties (EOP) noted that the company, “… adjusted the design of Foundry Square I to meet Barclays’ requirements, including large floor plates for contiguous trading operations and open meeting spaces, as well as emergency back-up power supply—an increasingly popular option among tenants in a state subject to rolling black-outs.”

The building was originally pre-leased from EOP by Sun Microsystems in 2000 when the project was still in the planning stage. The Santa Clara–based software developer then paid $85 million to break the lease in 2002 after the dot-com crash, according to the Wall Street Journal. At that time San Francisco had a glut of unleased office space and construction of new commercial projects was stalled. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2002 that, “Today’s citywide office vacancy rate is a record 21 percent—and just under 50 percent in the once-vibrant South of Market district [where Foundry Square is located]. Rent for prime space in the Financial District has fallen from highs near $80 per square foot two years ago [2000] to an average of about $30 per square foot today.” The City’s commercial vacancy rate is now back under 13 percent, with part of that some of the new construction yet to be leased.

When Barclays signed the lease for about 96 percent of the new building in 2005, it was seen as an indication that commercial development in the City was on the rise again. Western Real Estate Business reported that Barclays paid $55 per square foot for the prime office space. Ken Churich, vice president of leasing for Equity Office in San Francisco, called the agreement, “the third largest deal in San Francisco history.”

As one of several projects under construction by Webcor in the South of Market district, Foundry Square I is also an indication that there is lots of work for the construction trades in the City for our union members.