San Francisco Business Times
From The Article:
A long-stalled condominium project near Candlestick Park is being revived as an affordable rental housing development.
New York-based developer L+M Development Partners paid $29 million for Candlestick Heights, a 198-unit housing development near Candlestick Park that is about 30 percent completed. L+M Development Partners will immediately start leasing the 66 completed units, which will be available to families earning less 60 percent of Area Median Income (AMI) for San Francisco. That comes out to $65,600 for a family of five. Rents will range from $1,100 to $1,335 a month for a two-bedroom unit.
The deal represents the final chapter in a saga that started during the overheated bubble days of 2007. At the time the site, in one of San Francisco's poorest neighborhoods, was acquired for $18 million by James Noteware with partner Goldman Sachs, the same partnership that scooped up nearby 5800 Third St. The project, then called Jamestown, hit the rocks after the financial crisis of 2009. The development team, which had taken out a $90 million construction loan, went into default. James Noteware left town, later resurfacing as housing director for the city of Houston.
Citibank, the lender on Candlestick Heights, brought in Rick Holliday of Holliday Development to finish construction of the first phases of the mothballed project and figure out what to do with the rest. Holliday said that he weighed finishing the units and selling them off as condos, but that slow sales at nearby 5800 Third St. — that project eventually sold out but averaged just four sales a month — convinced him that a rental project made more sense. “With 198 units at four a month, we would have been out there for a long,” said Holliday.