Pier 70 lands first music festival as waterfront venue takes shape

Pier 70 has landed its first music festival, giving San Francisco’s long-promised Central Waterfront redevelopment a public use that people can actually attend. The 69-acre Port of San Francisco site sits between Mariposa and 22nd streets east of Illinois Street, in a stretch of Dogpatch where old industrial land, new development and the waterfront meet. Its shift from plan to place matters because the master plan was approved in 2010 and construction began in 2019 after a series of milestones that included an exclusive negotiation agreement in 2011, Prop F in 2014 and a final environmental review in 2017.

At the center of the next phase is Elevation Sky Park, a 165,000-square-foot immersive entertainment venue with more than 200 parking spaces. A June 2025 community-engagement deck described it as San Francisco’s first immersive entertainment park and laid out a lineup of geodesic structures: one 90-foot large dome for 600 to 800 people, one 72-foot pyramid for 200 to 350, two 70-foot medium domes for 300 to 500 each and three 60-foot small domes for 200 to 350 each. The project is pitched around concerts, film screenings, art and other events, with the deck saying it is meant to boost tourism and hotel occupancy while creating jobs in operations, production and hospitality.

In September, EMPIRE said it was making a strategic investment in and partnership with Elevation Sky Park San Francisco, describing the project as a forthcoming $6.5 million development. The company said programming would blend its artist roster with the venue’s immersive technology platform, a mix meant to widen the audience beyond the usual redevelopment crowd. Pier 70’s own social posts had already been teasing a new arts and entertainment destination for the evolving central waterfront neighborhood.

The new festival also puts Pier 70 into a growing waterfront event corridor. Pier 80, just up the shoreline, is already home to Portola Music Festival, which the city’s calendar listed for Sept. 20-21, 2025, from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. each day. For nearby restaurants, bars and service businesses in Dogpatch and along Illinois Street, more events at Pier 70 could mean steadier foot traffic. For the city, it is another test of whether a major redevelopment site can become a regular stop on San Francisco’s cultural calendar.