Dive Brief:

• The Gateway at Millbrae Station, one of the largest transit-oriented developments in California, celebrated significant topping out of both its residential and hotel components and the groundbreaking of its veteran's housing structure in July.
• The project team used a steel framing system from Prescient to cut overall project costs and reduce project schedules throughout the construction process, according to a press release shared with Construction Dive.
• Blach Construction and Cahill Contractors first broke ground in 2019, with final completion expected in 2022. Republic Urban Properties is the developer of the project, which is located about 14 miles south of San Francisco in Millbrae, California.

Dive Insight:

The development was deemed essential despite the shelter-in-place orders in California during the height of the pandemic. As construction work continued, the project team partnered with Prescient, maker of a pre-designed and pre-engineered framing system.

With this system, the project team was able to address the current impacts, such as price escalation, materials shortages, project safety and sustainability on several portions of the development in which the system was used. 

"Our objective with Prescient is to deliver measurable results through digitization and lean design, ultimately reducing project schedules, demand for labor and overall project costs," said Prescient CEO Magued Eldaief in the press release. This approach was the first to be used on a project of this size and has been key to meeting the target deadlines of the team, he said.

The mixed-use complex includes 100 affordable apartments, 80 of which are veteran-preferred. The project, poised to create 1,100 jobs, also consists of a 164-room Marriott Residence Inn, 150,000 square feet of Class-A office space and 44,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, restaurants, public open spaces, plazas, bike paths and dog parks. The space is located along the Highway 101 corridor, in close proximity to San Francisco International Airport and on several public transit lines including BART, CalTrain and SamTrans.

Mission Rock is another large mixed-use development in the region that is being built with prefabricated components. The $2.5 billion project is a public-private partnership between the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Giants and commercial real estate company Tishman Speyer.

Prefabricated building systems firm Clark Pacific worked with the owners and design firms like Henning Larsen, MVRDV, Studio Gang and WORKac to come up with a prefabrication solution that would also achieve the aesthetic of the project, which will feature natural and iconic California scenes on the exteriors.

When fully built in 2026, the development will offer up to 2.8 million square feet, including 1,200 residential units, public access waterfront improvements, 8 acres of new parks and open space, up to 1.4 million square feet of office space and more than 200,000 square feet of retail and manufacturing space.