Prologis plan for Bayview offers blue-collar salvation

The shipyard housing projects are seen in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016. The shipyard housing projects are seen in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016. Photo: Santiago Mejia, Special To The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Santiago Mejia, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Prologis plan for Bayview offers blue-collar salvation 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A developer plans to build the largest industrial complex San Francisco has seen in 50 years, a 1.16 million square foot project advocates say could help stem the loss of blue-collar jobs from a rapidly gentrifying city.

Prologis, a San Francisco industrial developer that operates in 20 countries, filed an application with the city Tuesday to build a three-story complex on 17 acres of land on a Bayview district site bordered by Rankin Street, Toland Avenue, Kirkwood Avenue and McKinnon Avenue. The development, which is being called the San Francisco Gateway Industrial Center, would replace four single-story buildings constructed in 1940 and totaling 448,000 square feet.

The project and a similar one Prologis plans to build in Seattle would be the first modern multistory warehouses built in the United States. Prologis has built multistory warehouses in Japan, Singapore and China.

Multistory industrial developments are essentially warehouses stacked on top of one another and connected by a network of truck ramps, loading docks and freight elevators. They are flexible and divisible and are equally well suited to manufacturing as they are warehousing goods.

Given the escalation of land values in dense urban areas like San Francisco, it makes sense to build denser and more efficient warehouses, which can bring production, distribution and repair services closer to urban consumers, according to Prologis Chief Executive Officer Hamid Moghadam.

“It makes sense in any urban area where land values are high, development pressures are great and land is scarce,” he said.

The proposal comes as San Francisco’s tech-fueled housing and office development boom squeezes out production, distribution and repair companies — a category of the economy that the city calls PDR. Between 2011 and 2015, approximately 1 million square feet of PDR space was lost in the Mission District, Potrero Hill, South of Market and Dogpatch, according to a city report.

“A lot of developments have been about eliminating these kind of jobs. We have an opportunity here to increase the number of jobs by a factor of eight or 10,” said Moghadam.

Prologis has hired a team of brokers and translators to work with current tenants on the property, which includes several Chinese businesses, according to Dan Letter, a managing director with Prologis. Some of the current tenants, which are generally paying below-market rate rents, could end up in the new building. But many will likely be relocated to other Bayview properties.

Todd Rufo, Director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said the city is “continuing to work with Prologis to ensure that existing businesses on the site are able to relocate nearby when construction begins.”

“We’ve been watching this proposal with interest because it would provide a lot of net new space for PDR jobs, helping meet one of Mayor Lee’s key goals of expanding good middle class employment opportunities within the city,” said Rufo.

Prologis, which owns more than 600 million square feet of space in 20 countries, hopes to have the project approved in 2017. It would take 14 months to build.

“I think this is really exciting for the city — we’re talking about an actual expansion of PDR uses at a scale we have not seen before,” said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the urban think tank SPUR. “This is a modern version of how to provide the services that support the every day functioning of a big city.”

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@