W 1.0
Where we build
San Francisco first, because that is where a builder’s knowledge of the process is worth the most. Then the Bay Area around it, where the buildings are similar and the approval paths are frequently kinder.
981 Howard St, San Francisco, CA 94103
The city line matters more here than distance does. Ten minutes south of it, the same house with the same addition can be on a materially shorter approval path.
That is not a criticism of San Francisco. It is a consequence of a dense city with a hundred-and-fifty-year-old housing stock, a strong tradition of neighbourhood participation, and design guidelines that are guidelines rather than rules. Those three things together produce the entitlement bars you see on the schedule page.
They also produce the reason to hire somebody who has been through it a great many times. In a jurisdiction where approval is mostly ministerial, a builder’s process knowledge is worth comparatively little. In San Francisco it is worth months.
So: we work everywhere below. Where we are worth the most to you is inside the city limits, and where a project is genuinely better served by a local builder in another county, we will say so rather than submit a bid.
A straightforward kitchen an hour from here, where a good local builder will do it faster and cheaper and be ten minutes away when something goes wrong. Distance costs you real money in supervision and response, and we would rather lose the work than be the expensive answer to somebody else’s question.
Neighbourhoods and places
- San Francisco
- Noe Valley
- Bernal Heights
- the Mission
- the Sunset
- the Richmond
- Potrero Hill
- Glen Park
- Pacific Heights
- the Excelsior
- Daly City
- South San Francisco
- Marin County
- the East Bay
- the Peninsula
Not an exhaustive list and not a boundary. San Francisco and Bay Area residential work generally, wherever the project fits.
Trico Construction, LLC
981 Howard StSan Francisco, CA 94103- Telephone
- (415) 543-2100
- [email protected]
- Hours
- Mon–Fri 8:00 AM–5:00 PM PT
- Licence
- CSLB licence number on request
- In business
- San Francisco since 1973
W 2.0 Across the line
What changes when you leave the city
Published because it is the sort of thing an owner discovers after buying, and it is worth knowing before.
| What | In San Francisco | Typically elsewhere in the Bay Area |
|---|---|---|
| Entitlement | Long, discretionary, with neighbourhood notification on many projects | Shorter, more ministerial, notification on fewer projects |
| Discretionary review | A real and specific risk with its own process | Usually no direct equivalent |
| Lot and access | Narrow, attached on one or both sides, no side yard, no staging room | Frequently detached with a driveway and a yard to work from |
| The building itself | Mostly pre-1930 wood frame, frequently with a soft storey | More varied, and a much larger share built after 1950 |
| Tenant law on occupied work | Strong protections, and consequential | Varies substantially by city, and frequently lighter |
| Construction cost per square foot | The highest in the region, largely because of access and labour | Usually 10–25% lower for equivalent work |
| What a builder’s local knowledge is worth | Months | Weeks |
The last row is the honest summary of this whole page. If you are building outside the city and the approval path is straightforward, the most useful thing about us is worth less to you — and you should weigh that against a good local builder with a shorter drive.
Tell us the address
The address decides more than almost anything else: the approval path, the likely condition of what is already there, and how much room there is to work. Give us that and a sentence about what you want, and the first answer is usually useful.
Trico Construction, LLC · 981 Howard St, San Francisco, CA 94103