Salesforce Tower Nears Completion as Final Beam Installed

The Bay Area’s tallest building is almost finished. The structural phase of construction on the $1.1 billion Salesforce Tower in downtown San Francisco was completed this week, and the building is expected to open in early 2018.

Workers broke ground on the project four years ago, and it now stands almost 1,000 feet tall.

"There’s almost no point in San Francisco that you can be in today without seeing this tower,” said Supervisor Jane Kim at the tower’s topping-off ceremony on Thursday. “Whether you’re in the Sunset or the Richmond, this is truly changing the skyline."

Seventy percent of the building has already been leased to companies including Salesforce, Bain & Co. and Accenture. Salesforce alone will have offices on floors 3 to 30, and plans to have a total of 10,000 employees working out of this and two adjacent buildings.

Salesforce will also occupy the 61st floor, which will be left open, without offices or conference rooms. CEO Marc Benioff said the floor will be used as a meeting space for employees during the workday, and will be available to community organizations after hours, free of charge.

Benioff said the tower "needs to be a symbol for not just a great company, but a reminder that we all need to be giving back and doing something for others."

Approximately 700 construction workers work on-site each day. Tana Harris, a manlift operator, has worked on the project for two years, moving construction materials and coworkers up and down the building’s 64 floors in a large construction elevator.

Now she has only a few months left. At the topping-off ceremony, she was one of hundreds who signed the tower’s last beam before it was installed.

“This is going to be a wonderful experience, just to go down in history,” she said. “I put my name on the building, so I’ll remember this always.”