Modification Filed on Partly Built First and Mission Towers

San Francisco’s Planning Department has logged a modification filing on the First and Mission Project at 50 1st Street, where excavation for a shared basement across the entire property is already complete. Record 2026-008984PRJ, submitted Oct. 11, lists 156 proposed units on a parcel with zero existing units, and it amends case 2006.1523, the project’s original approval. That makes this a change request on a job already under construction, not a new proposal.

Why it matters

A modification filed mid-build is a different signal than a ground-up application: it means whoever controls the site wants the city to approve changes to a plan already under construction. Case 2006.1523 traces to 2016, when planners approved what was then Oceanwide Center, a Foster + Partners-designed office and residential complex for Chinese developer Oceanwide Holdings. Oceanwide later defaulted on more than $700 million in project debt, and lender Haitong International took the site at a foreclosure auction in January, The Real Deal reported. San Francisco Recovery Fund, a group including former SKS Partners executive Dan Kingsley, put a deposit down in December and has since circulated new Gensler renderings of a redesigned tower it calls Fifty at First, SFist reported in September. The record does not name who filed the Oct. 11 modification, and no published report confirms the Recovery Fund’s purchase closed, so ownership of the San Francisco site should be treated as unsettled.

The numbers

The record describes the filing as a modification to the approved and partially constructed First and Mission Project under case 2006.1523 and its associated demolition and new-construction building permits, and states that excavation for the shared basement across the entire property has already been completed. It lists 156 proposed units against zero existing units at APN 3708/003, with a status of “Submitted,” meaning it is pending and has not been approved. The underlying case was opened two decades before this filing. Separately, Haitong secured the site at the January foreclosure auction with a minimum bid of $100 million after Oceanwide’s default, per The Real Deal.

What’s next

The modification is pending Planning Department review, with no hearing date or decision timeline set in the record. Because the basement excavation is already finished, the project cannot simply restart from a blank slate however the filing is resolved. It is not established by the record, or by published reporting, whether this filing is the entitlement step behind the Recovery Fund’s publicized office-tower redesign, a separate change to the residential component, or something else. The planning file for 2026-008984PRJ is the document to watch for what changes at one of downtown’s longest-running construction sites.