San Francisco Business Times
From the article:
Tishman Speyer's introduction to the San Francisco housing market last decade was awkward, and almost disastrous.
First, the New York-based property developer lost $100 million on a Market Street office building it tried to convert to housing in 2003. Two years later, workers found a 19th-century whaling ship underneath the construction site of Tishman's first condo towers in the city on Folsom Street, forcing delays and draining money.
Tishman brought those Folsom Street condo towers, known as Infinity, to market just as the recession whacked developers everywhere. Meanwhile, the private company was in turmoil after the biggest real estate failure in history on its deal for the Stuyvesant Town housing development in New York.
"Some people were concerned when that went under, whether Tishman would go under," said Mark Choey, a real estate broker who sold to more than 100 buyers in Infinity. "There were definitely people asking the question: How is that going to affect Infinity?"
Tishman moved boldly to stop matters getting worse. Led by Managing Director Carl Shannon, it chopped prices on unsold Infinity units by a quarter, becoming the only condo builder in the country to sell 200 units in the depths of 2009. In the process, it laid the groundwork to become one of San Francisco's most successful builders — and the city's largest developer of luxury housing. It's been more than willing to take big risks, and by pairing its luxury condos with some of the largest affordable housing developments in San Francisco, it has avoided many of the political battles that have hobbled other developers.
"The success of (Infinity) in the San Francisco market just kept cranking up their appetite," said Jeffrey Heller, president of Heller Manus Architects, which designed Infinity. "It gave them a huge foothold in the San Francisco residential market."
In 2013, when few others were building, Tishman inked one of the largest real estate developers in the world — China Vanke — as a joint venture partner for the Lumina condo project. It also landed a $371 million construction loan from Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers, allowing Tishman to break ground on Lumina before construction costs started skyrocketing. It's already sold a quarter of the 650 Lumina units, raising prices as locals and out-of-town investors rush to buy.