The TJPA board's decision affirms that of the jury for the international design and development competition, which placed Pelli-Hines proposal well ahead of the others. The jury gave the Pelli-Hines proposal an average score of 90, saying it was superior to the two other proposals in all respects, aesthetically, functionally and financially. The second-place proposal, from Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Rockefeller Group Development Corp., garnered an average score of 72. The third-place proposal, from Richard Rogers Partnership, Forest City Enterprises and MacFarlane Partners, had an average score of 61.

Pelli-Hines' proposal calls for a 1.8-million-sf, 1,300-foot tower alongside a new transit terminal topped by a public park. Two defining components of the Pelli-Hines proposal are the price it is offering to pay for the Tower property, which, at $350 million, is more than double that of the other proposals; and the elevated 5.4-acre park it designed atop the Transit Center Building, something the two other proposals do not include. In addition, Hines envisions the tower containing exclusively office space while two other tower proposals had significant residential and hospitality components. Hines is projecting annual gross office rents at $83 per sf.

The redeveloped Transbay Transit Center will centralize the region's transportation network by accommodating eight transportation systems under one roof--AC Transit, Caltrain, MUNI, Golden Gate Transit, SamTrans, Greyhound, BART and the future California High-Speed Rail, which will transport people between San Francisco and Los Angeles in less than three hours. The design presentations represent one of the final stages of an eight-month international competition to find a design with "aesthetic and functional excellence" and that provides "a sound economic return to the TJPA."