SF New Developments

$350M tower developer accelerates timetable for living large
by J.K. Dineen

Millennium Partners is pushing up its sales schedule on the $350 million Millennium Tower by six months, seeing heavy demand at the highest echelon of the condo market.

Sales on the $350 million, 60-story blue-gray tower will kick off in November, rather than spring of 2008, according to Millennium officials. Driving the decision is demand for resale units at the city’s two hotel-condo projects, the Four Seasons, which Millennium owns, and the St. Regis.

“The market is right,” said Millennium Partners Managing Director Richard Baumert. “Our office gets 10 to 12 calls a week for resales on the Four Seasons. With that demand, we see a real advantage to coming out with a product that is comparable to the Four Seasons and the St. Regis.”

The decision to advance the sales schedule comes after the Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences sold out its 57 condos and the St. Regis has seen strong resales. One unit on the 26th floor of the St. Regis sold May 31 for $2.7 million, or $1,617 a square foot, a 59 percent increase over the original $1.7 million price a little more than a year earlier. Another unit on the 34th floor sold for $1.6 million in 2005, for $1.95 million in March of 2006, and again for $2.4 million in December of 2006, according to Malcolm Kaufman of Maguire Real Estate.

Sean Jeffries, a principal with Millennium, said the pricing of the units at the Millennium had not been finalized, but that it would represent “the highest price per square foot in the marketplace.”

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