Hayes Davidson
Luxury condos, some priced at $3 million, are planned as part of a multi-billion-dollar redevelopment of Yerba Buena Island and the neighboring Treasure Island.
- Yerba Buena is an island that sits in the bay between San Francisco and Oakland.
- It's a naturally formed landmass known for an expansive wildlife ecosystem, but it's also apart of a multi-billion-dollar redevelopment project that will transform it and the neighboring Treasure Island into a new neighborhood.
- Here's what it will look like when it's complete.
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Yerba Buena is a naturally formed island that sits in the bay between San Francisco and Oakland. It's known for its brimming ecosystem of protected wildlife, its sweeping views of the water and the city, and for being a crossing point on the Bay Bridge.
But soon, the island will feature 266 luxury homes as part of a multi-billion-dollar redevelopment project that also includes Yerba Buena's neighbor, the man-made landmass Treasure Island.
There are three clusters of housing developments planned for Yerba Buena with condos, townhomes, and flats included in the offerings.
Led by developer Wilson Meany, construction on Yerba Buena broke ground in mid-2019. Since Yerba Buena has a protected wildlife ecosystem, most of the new housing will be built on Treasure Island with 75% of Yerba Buena remaining untouched as open space. But the Yerba Buena construction has already begun, making it the first step of the master plan to transform the two islands into a new neighborhood.
Treasure Island has a long history, including its time spent as a US Navy base and a Cold War-era nuclear-training site, which resulted in residual contamination on the island and a necessitated clean-up. Hundreds of residents have already lived on Treasure Island in the past two decades, and in late January, dozens of residents filed a class-action lawsuit against several defendants - including the San Francisco Health Department, the Treasure Island Development Authority, and engineering firm Tetra Tech - saying that officials lied to them for years regarding the full scope of the contamination on the landmass and their subsequent exposure to it.
Some of the named defendants pushed back on those claims in statements made to The San Francisco Chronicle, such as a spokesperson for the city attorney who reiterated that the island was indeed safe and denied the allegation that city officials weren't transparent about the state of the island. The lawsuit is asking for $2 billion to be paid in damages and for the redevelopment on the island to halt until all toxic substances are confirmed to have been removed.
But unlike its neighbor, Yerba Buena is free of a radioactive history. Asking prices for luxury homes at The Bristol, one of the condo complexes planned for the island, were recently announced. Studios will be priced at $800,000, one-bedrooms at $1 million, two-bedrooms at $1.7 million, and three-bedrooms at $3 million. They all face the East Bay while other homes face the city.
Here's what the finished Yerba Buena Island project will look like.