Mattress maker Zinus houses its U.S. sales, marketing and distribution operations in the East Bay. It recently expanded into San Leandro. 

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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Zinus Inc., a mattress and bedding distributor, took 116,017 square feet in the Fairway Industrial Center at 1951 Fairway Drive in San Leandro.

The company plans to expand from its current 48,000-square-foot space at 30799 Wiegman Road in Hayward, which serves as its U.S. sales and marketing base.

Zinus, based in Asia, also has offices in Canada, China and Korea. It makes mattresses, pillows, sleep foundations and slippers sold in stores such as Target, Bed Bath Beyond, Sam’s Club and Walmart.

The company’s San Leandro deal is one of the largest inked this year in the East Bay.

“The commercial real estate market is showing continued signs of improvement,” said Greig Lagomarsino, a broker with Colliers International who represented the landlord, Loma Verde Properties along with Todd Severson and Nick Ousman of the same firm. “Many Bay Area companies are back in expansion mode and this transaction is indicative of the market today. This facility provides an excellent opportunity to accommodate Zinus’ current and future expansion needs.”

Fairway Industrial Center contains 288,000 square feet with about 38,638 square feet available for lease.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/04/zinus-inc-takes-116000-sf-in-san.html

“We are delighted that UBS is involved with this asset,” said Tom Engberg, Chief Executive Officer of Loja Real Estate. “They understand the value of this property as a community asset for the town of Pleasant Hill. We believe they will carry on with the program of improvements we instituted here,” he said.

Downtown Pleasant Hill is a 345,687 sq. ft. shopping center with prime retail space located in the affluent community of Pleasant Hill in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA. Downtown Pleasant Hill is the central business district for the town with 40 brand name retailers, including Century Theaters, Lucky Supermarket, Bed Bath Beyond, Michaels, Ross, Golfsmith, Paul Mitchell the School, Carter’s, and Zachary’s Chicago Pizza.

“Loja’s real estate team is to be commended for adding value to an already strong property. It has been a real pleasure to own Downtown Pleasant Hill and it would be a great property to retain in our portfolio. We felt, however, that this was an opportune time to sell and advance other important initiatives at Loja,” said Katherine Burr, CEO of Loja Group LLC.

Loja was represented in the sale by Kevin Van Voorhis, James Kaye, Jay Gomez and Lindsey Lantis of Colliers International.

About UBS Global Asset Management

With over 35 years of real estate investment advisory experience, the US real estate business of UBS Global Asset Management has approximately $20.2 billion under management on behalf of over 450 clients. A multi disciplined real estate organization with staff of approximately 176, it is headquartered in Hartford, Connecticut with regional offices in San Francisco and Dallas. In addition to its US real estate business, UBS Global Asset Management, Global Real Estate manages investments in Europe, Asia and Australia, totaling approximately $65 billion in real estate and real estate securities worldwide. In the US it operates through its legal entities, UBS Realty Investors LLC and UBS AgriVest LLC, registered investment advisors. www.ubs.com/realestate

About Loja Group LLC/Loja Real Estate, LLC

Loja Group LLC is a real estate investment management firm with $190 million in assets under management. Through Loja Real Estate, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary, Loja acquires and manages grocery-anchored real estate assets throughout the United States for institutional clients. Additional information about Loja may be found at www.lojagroup.com.

Article source: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/loja-real-estate-sells-downtown-pleasant-hill-shopping-center-pleasant-hill-ca-1767228.htm

mOasis Inc. leased 11,000 square feet in the Dowe Business Park in Union City. 

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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MOasis Inc. is taking its headquarters east to Union City from Mountain View.

The company, a maker of a polymer hydrogel, leased 11,000 square feet in the Dowe Business Park, a 354,000-square foot industrial park owned by Harsch Investment Properties.

The tenant, founded in 2010 at Stanford University, makes a gel used to store and preserve crops throughout California. The company says its product increases crop yields and helps farmers reduce their water and energy use.

“We’ve had the fortunate problem of outgrowing our lab space at Stanford a year ago, and in Mountain View most recently, and we are thrilled to find a new home at Dowe Business Park,” said Susanna Kass, CEO and president of mOasis Inc. “We now have a work space that offers both office and production space, as well as a lab. Dowe’s location is convenient for our East and South Bay-based employees and we look forward to the expansion and growth that the property will allow us.”

The property is now 85 percent occupied. It is close to Interstate 880 and both the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges.

“This is a great time for real estate activity in the East Bay, and our properties here are seeing steady growth,” said Don Little, senior vice president for Harsch Investment Properties in the Bay Area and head of development in three states.

Harsch, based in Portland, Ore., owns and operates 20 million square feet of office, multi-tenant industrial, multi-family and retail properties in five western states and has regional offices in Seattle, the Bay Area, Sacramento, Las Vegas, and San Diego.

Harsch Investment Properties was represented by Joe Yamin and Sean Sabarese of Colliers International.

MOasis Inc. was represented by Rick Keely and Aileen Dolby of Colliers International.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/01/moasis-moving-to-union-city-ditches.html

At times, it seems like there has been steady economic growth in SoMa from the tech explosion of the late 1990s to today’s boom. While the newfound expansion, one based on the seemingly limitless possibilities of social networking, is re-inventing the way people communicate from China to the Carribbean, its beating heart lies in SoMa’s row after row of converted warehouses.

“The high-tech industry is a bright spot in an otherwise gray economic picture. High-tech jobs have grown nearly four times faster than the overall economy during the past 18 months,” a report by real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle noted.

Over that same period, tech job growth in San Francisco surged by 16.1 percent — the fastest of any area in the country, according to the report. That’s one and a half times the rate in Silicon Valley during the past year and a half — and growth has been the largest in SoMa. If tech is one of the most resilient parts of the U.S. economy, the strongest part of tech is in SoMa.

(SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS)

These jobs are largely generated by eager young companies champing at the bit to become the next Google or Microsoft, and they all need somewhere to house their employees. This need has led to a hyperactive scramble for office space that seems shocking so soon after an irrationally exuberant real estate market catalyzed the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression.

In October, the real estate firm Colliers International released a report that found 40 tech companies were looking for approximately two million square feet of office space in San Francisco, primarily in SoMa. Mayor Ed Lee noted that the space they were seeking to fill was “[the] equivalent of nearly four Transamerica Pyramids.”

For a variety of reasons, SoMa has developed into the northern, and most attractive, edge of Silicon Valley. Office spaces in the city’s former warehouse district look like what most tech firms think a tech office should look like — high ceilings, exposed brick walls and open floor plans that encourage collaboration. Not only do these offices fit the platonic ideal for “creative space,” they’re also in close proximity to the homes of the top talent the companies are hoping to attract.

Since its nadir in mid-2010, rents in the hot sections of SoMa have increased by 25 to 30 percent, according to Colin Yasukochi, director of operations at Jones Lang LaSalle, begging the question: Is this the next big bubble? And is it headed for an inevitable burst?

A DIFFERENT KIND OF BOOM

“The current boom is more San Francisco-centric than the one in the ’90s,” said Brady Barbier, associate managing director of Integra Realty Resources, the largest independent commercial real estate valuation and consulting firm in North America. “That one was more engineer-driven, and this one is more centered around social media and ad sales.”

The employees fueling this boom are generally more interested than their code-jockey predecessors in living and working in San Francisco’s vibrant metropolis instead of the South Bay’s sprawling landscape of sleepy suburbs and nondescript office parks.

“The firms that feel strongly about attracting top talent will swallow the pill and buy the expensive space in the city,” said Hessam Nadji, managing director at real estate investment services firm Marcus Millichap.

Once the number of tech firms in SoMa hit a critical mass, movement of more companies into the neighborhood became a self-fulfilling prophecy. “With tech firms, everyone is looking for synergy. They want to be close to each other and share ideas,” Barbier said.

Moving into SoMa’s tight cluster not only affords young companies the opportunity to exchange ideas and dream up collaboration while standing in line for those aforementioned artisanal grilled cheese sandwiches, but also makes poaching talent from competitors significantly easier. Convincing that hotshot project manager to jump ship is considerably easier when his or her new commute would be essentially the same 10-minute bike ride he or she is already making, instead of a 45-minute slog through bumper-to-bumper traffic.

THE FOG CITY’S ALLURE

When a company is looking for space in San Francisco, experts in the commercial real estate community say the company will almost always end up finding something in the city.

“It rarely happens that a company starts looking at SF, decides it’s too expensive and moves out to Walnut Creek,” Barbier said. “If you’re a company that wants to be in SF, chances are you’re going to make it happen.”

Colin Yasukochi of Jones Lang LaSalle agreed. “There are more companies coming into the city than San Francisco companies deciding to go somewhere else,” he said.

Twitter’s threat to leave San Francisco for the thriftier pastures of Brisbane represented a special case — a firm outgrowing its space, just on the cusp of having a strong enough gravitational pull (a la Google, Facebook or Salesforce) to attract top talent no matter where it’s located. For a company like Twitter, moving out of San Francisco carried both risk and reward — on one hand, it wouldn’t have to pay the city millions in payroll taxes on its impending IPO, but on the other hand, it might lose out on gobbling up the brilliant engineer who could otherwise design a “Twitter killer” for one of its competitors. Fortunately for Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and his colleagues, San Francisco officials — panicked over the possibility that Twitter’s departure could spark a mass exodus — handed the micro-blogging powerhouse a massive tax break as an incentive to remain downtown.

San Francisco isn’t Houston; it’s not the type of city where new construction is simple or cheap. As a result, the supply of available office space in SoMa is drying up fast. Vacancy rates along the trendy Second Street corridor are in the single digits.

“It’s beginning to be difficult to find 5,000 feet of creative space in SoMa,” said Tom Owens, founder of New Urban Properties. Hence, landlords of the properties that do become available are able to hike their rents to heretofore unimaginable levels with the confidence that, somewhere out there, a mobile gaming or online coupon company will be more than happy to pay whatever amount is asked.

Real estate firms see this and, since it’s supremely difficult to just create a new building from the ground up, they opt for the next best thing.

As a result, SoMa has seen a spike in the number of firms engaging in what’s called “value-added investing.” Investors take an already-existing property that is unfit for commercial use, renovate it, and then sell it within a few years to a larger firm looking to hold onto it for the longer term. It’s a riskier endeavor than simply renting out an established property and riding out the natural increase in rent that inevitably comes with an improving economy, but in an area eager for new development, it’s virtually the only way to expand the pool of available space.

A year ago, these “value-added investing” projects would have had a much more difficult time finding financing. Now there’s no shortage of backers. “There’s no credit crunch for projects that make sense,” Barbier said.

WILL THE BUBBLE BURST?

Despite surging demand in the market, the recent explosion in prices remains a source of unease.

“As an appraiser, any time you see excessive growth, it just makes you nervous,” said Mark Linne, executive vice president of the real estate valuation services company Appraisal World. “I don’t see rent growth of 25 percent being sustainable.”

Even though it’s unlikely that the current skyrocketing rent growth will continue indefinitely, that doesn’t mean a crash is inevitable, experts say. There’s the strong probability that rents will stabilize at a fairly high level and that many companies will continue to pay them. Others, priced out of this particular market, may move to different parts of the city, such as the Financial District, which is increasingly remodeling floors of its towering office buildings to more closely resemble SoMa’s creative spaces, or may follow Twitter’s example and relocate to the rapidly redeveloping mid-Market area.

If what’s happening in SoMa really is a bubble, the shifting of some development energy to other areas in the city may safely let out enough air for the market to stabilize. On the other hand, if what’s going on is actually just part of a larger social media bubble, then all bets are off.

“Conventional wisdom, and if you look back at history, is that [this market will be] cyclical,” Barbier said. “Combined with the current economic instability, I think this will be a few-year deal, and some of these guys will fall by the wayside, and pricing will come down. I mean, how many online coupon companies do you really need?”

Nadji agreed. “It’s unlikely that what we’re seeing is a development bubble, but it could be a pricing bubble,” he said. “The risk is heavier on the demand side than on the over-building side — meaning what would likely pop the bubble is a lot of these companies failing and not needing real estate.”

Online gaming giant Zynga is considered one of the drivers of the boom, with programs like FarmVille and Mafia Wars cluttering Facebook news feeds for years. Its move into its current Townsend Street headquarters, a building formerly mostly occupied by fellow gaming pioneer Sega, was one of the strongest initial signals of SoMa’s real estate resurgence. Yet Zynga’s long awaited IPO hit the market late last week with a resounding thud — opening at $10 a share, the stock never saw the expected flurry of activity many hoped would drive the price into the stratosphere. Instead, on investor fears of flat growth, the stock has remained just below its IPO price.

Zynga is one of the leading lights of the new tech boom, and a lack of enthusiasm toward its stock may be an ominous sign.

But this isn’t to imply that the newfound growth in the tech sector is necessarily a repeat of the heady days preceding the dot com crash. Today’s companies rest on much firmer footing than those involved in Pets.com’s infamous sock puppet spokesdog moving to the front of the unemployment line. “This current wave is far more grounded than the dot com boom,” Nadji said. “Companies need to prove themselves, and their revenue model, far earlier in the process in order get funding.”

Many real estate investors, still skittish from the sub-prime fiasco in the residential market, also exercise an excess of caution in their investments. “It’s rare for one bubble to follow another when talking about the same asset class,” said Anirban Basu, chief economist for Associated Builders and Contractors. “Once you’ve had one type of bubble burst, people are usually apprehensive about similar types of investments right afterward.”

Even so, there’s a very real possibility that the high cost of office space takes a toll on the fledgling companies driving the current boom. “In San Francisco, we always hear that we can justify these increases in rent because of our location. And I can buy that to a degree. But at the end of the day, there’s only so much a tenant can pay,” Linne said. “If you’re a start-up trying to scrape together money, paying an arm and a leg to rent in SoMa doesn’t make much sense.”

One of the keys to identifying any asset bubble before it bursts, according to Linne, is locating the market distortions that are artificially inflating prices. In this case, the distortion could very well be the idea that if you want to have a successful tech company that attracts top talent, you have to be in this one very small geographic area.

“It’s an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ phenomenon — everything is fine as long as everyone believes,” Linne said. “As long as people are reasonable and believe that these values are appropriate, it’s fine. But when tenants start to balk, that’s when the cracks start to appear.”

If the lines for grilled cheese are any indication, there is likely still more than enough of the necessary Kool-Aid to keep everything afloat.

At least for now.

Check out the slideshow below to see some of the hottest office spaces currently available in SoMa:

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/19/soma-real-estate-bubble_n_1158617.html

OnTrac leased this entire 50,000-square-foot south Petaluma building for expansion.

As part of a ramp up of Bay Area service, Phoenix, Ariz.-based regional overnight package courier OnTrac is expanding its North Bay hub. The company in August leased the entire former 50,000-square-foot Scandinavian Designs distribution center at 3830 Cypress Drive in Petaluma. From one loading dock in 9,000 square feet at 374 Blodgett St. in Cotati, OnTrac will have seven dock doors and two grade-level doors, allowing the company to handle 60 percent more packages for its service area, nearly 400 miles of coastline from San Francisco to Oregon, according to Laura Peterson, marketing vice president.

Founded 20 years ago as California Overnight and focusing on moving escrow and other documents for professional services firms, OnTrac now serves various industries in seven Western states, adding Colorado in September, and has annual revenues of more than $200 million. The service doesn’t deliver wine, according to Ms. Peterson.

OnTrac markets itself as a faster, less-expensive alternative to national couriers. The company has California hubs in Sacramento, San Jose, San Francisco and a new one in Menlo Park. The largest facility is a new 160,000-square-foot hub in Reno, Nev.

OnTrac currently has 15 employees plus independent contractor drivers at the North Bay hub and will be hiring five sorters (resumes: HRMail@OnTrac.com) as well as more drivers (vendorrelations@OnTrac.com) for the Petaluma facility.

Jerry Angel of Cornish Carey Commercial Newmark Knight Frank and Rick Keefer of Pacific Union International represented the building owner. John Kovaleski of Colliers International represented OnTrac.

In the past three months, a number of offers from expanding North Bay companies came in on the building, but most were looking for up to 30,000 square feet, according to Mr. Keefer.

***

The Marin County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday could postpone until Nov. 15 a decision for the county to purchase part of a large San Rafael commercial property to be the new home for the Sheriff’s Department and other emergency services currently located at the Civic Center to the south in San Rafael. On Sept. 13 the board postponed the decision until Oct. 4 to give staff more time to study the venture.

If the board decides to move forward with such a purchase, the supervisors will be considering whether to purchase the entire 328,000-square-foot office building at 1600 Los Gamos Drive in the Marin Commons two-building development for $30 million or 165,000 square feet of it for $24 million, as part of the purchase option agreement with owner CORAC LLC from earlier this year.

If the board chooses the partial purchase, CORAC would pursue a lot split, according to board documents. In studying the plan, county has released $100,000 of the $250,000 deposit since the April agreement was signed.

Should any sale move forward, escrow could close in 45 days, per the agreement, unless the either side of the deal decides to extend it for 90 days, according to David Spear, facilities planning and development manager. How much of the space county offices will occupy depends on forthcoming space planning and accommodating existing tenants in the building, he said.

Marin Commons has been a big piece of the the county’s office vacancy rate for years, even before the current owner took it back in a 2009 foreclosure.

“A county deal at Marin Commons would absorb a big chunk of space,” said Whitney Strotz, head of Cassidy Turley BT Commercial‘s San Rafael office.

***

Fairfield-based developer, owner and property manager The Wiseman Co. acquired the 30,000-square-foot class A Westside Professional Building at 2480 Hilborn Road and an adjacent pad. It’s the only zoned and approved office building site on the west side of Interstate 80, according to the company.

The building had been taken back by Sterling Savings Bank when the previous owner was unable to find enough tenants, according to Doyle Wiseman, chief executive officer. Current tenants on the ground floor are Fidelity Title Co., Richard Whittaker‘s law firm, and publicly traded Vitas Innovative Hospice Care.

“The price was severely depressed because of the previous owner’s inability to lease the property and the bank’s urgent need to sell,” he said.

Without disclosing the actual amount, he said the property was acquired for less than half the $10 million-plus assessed value of the property.

Wiseman brokers are in talks with an undisclosed company to occupy the second floor.

***

Groskopf Warehouse Logistics found a large Napa Valley warehouse for its expansion. [See "Wine warehouser Groskopf plans expansion," Aug. 15.] The Sonoma-based company signed a three-year lease with Upvalley Associates LLC for 60,000 square feet at 801 Hanna Ct. in American Canyon with first right of refusal on the whole 101,000-square-foot former Western Wine Cellars warehouse, according to Groskopf’s agents, Kevin Doran and John Rico of Keegan Coppin. Bret DeMartini of Grubb Ellis represented Upvalley in the Aug. 28 deal.

***

Steve and Judy Mahrt, owners of Petaluma Farms, which produces Judy’s Family Farms organic eggs, are back to buying Petaluma office buildings and converting them back to industrial buildings for business expansion, according to local real estate sources.

In the first half of this year, the Mahrts purchased the 15,616-square-foot former Creative Leisure office building at 951 Transport with plans to convert it to egg distribution warehousing with a possible retail aspect. [See the May 31 commercial real estate column.]

On Aug. 9 Mahrt Family 2008 Trust purchased the former home of First California Mortgage Co., nearly 19,000-square-foot 939 Transport Way, from the Bergmann Family Trust for $1.375 million, or about $74 a square foot. Chris Castellucci of Keegan Coppin represented the Bergmann family in the sale. Mr. Mahrt was not available for comment.

•••

Submit items for this column to jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or call 707-521-4256.

Copyright © 1988–2011 North Bay Business Journal
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Topics: County of Marin, Fairfield, industrial real estate, investment real estate, Marin Commons, Marin County, Napa County, office real estate, OnTrac, Petaluma, Petaluma Farms, San Rafael, Solano County, Sonoma County, The Wiseman Co. | Categories: Commercial Real Estate, Industry News, Position, Top News Stories

Article source: http://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/41293/commercial-real-estate-ontrac-makes-big-north-bay-courier-hub-expansion/

San Francisco-based Savoy Corp. sold three buildings totaling nearly 88,000 square feet at 5330 Old Redwood Hwy., 1341-1353 Redwood Way and 1363-1367 Redwood Way to PBJ Acquisitions, LLC, in mid-June for $5.1 million, or about $58 a square foot. Savoy had the property listed for $6.5 million.

One of the former Savoy buildings in Petaluma

Formed in March, PBJ is an investor in value-add Northern California properties, according to Bill Sumski, a San Francisco real estate attorney who has also been involved in major Bay Area redevelopment projects and worked with PBJ. Tony Crossley and Tim Maas of Colliers International San Francisco Investments represented Savoy the recent sale.

“We want to leverage off the good momentum in the Petaluma marketplace,” Mr. Sumski said. “There is opportunity to take advantage of the increase in occupancy and increase in rents. Generally, we’re buy and hold.”

The investors are looking for continued northern migration of companies from southern to northern Marin County to Petaluma, he said.

Haden Ongago and Mark Carrington of Cornish Carey Commercial Newmark Knight Frank are marketing the properties, which are 65 percent occupied. Significant tenants are Union Bank, Broadcom and Computer Associates.

Savoy sold a 34,000-square-foot building at 1445 N. McDowell Blvd. for about $2 million in July 2010. Savoy sold it and a 62,000-square-foot San Francisco office building to Rona Real Estate, LLC, for a total of $15 million.

***

Petaluma commercial real estate experts have been expecting the string of large leases and property sales to company owners to bring down the very high office vacancy rate, and the latest figures bear that out.

Nearly 228,000 square feet of Petaluma office space came off the market in the 12 months ending in June, according to new figures from Keegan Coppin. Together with nearly 19,000 square feet of net space absorption over the period in Santa Rosa, net absorption countywide was 184,3oo square feet.

Over the 12 months, the office vacancy rate countywide fell more than a percentage point from a high figure of 23.8 percent to a still high 22.4 percent at the end of June, according to the brokerage.

The Petaluma office vacancy rate fell nearly three percentage points to 30.9 percent at the end of the second quarter with 970,000 square feet available from 33.8 percent for 1.06 million square feet vacant.

Cornish Carey Commerical Newmark Knight Frank reports that Sonoma County had 123,000 square feet of class A office space net absorption in just the first half of this year, with a net of 43,000 square feet coming off the market in Petaluma and nearly 60,000 square feet in Santa Rosa.

Little of the net leasing activity this year has been for class B office space, which makes up roughly half the 8 million-square-foot Sonoma County market, the brokerage reported. Net absorption was negative 14,000 square feet for that class of space.

The Sonoma County industrial market fared far better over the past 12 months, according to Keegan Coppin. Thanks to net space absorption of 217,000 square feet in Petaluma, 209,000 square feet in Santa Rosa and 185,000 square feet from the Sonoma County Airport-area business parks north, the county’s major industrial markets had 585,000 square feet less space available for lease than a year earlier.

In just the past quarter, the countywide industrial vacancy rate fell to 12.2 percent from 13.4 percent when the first quarter ended, the brokerage reported.

In Petaluma, the change in available industrial real estate to lease was dramatic. The vacancy rate fell to 12.4 percent for 662,000 square feet available at the end of June from 17.5 percent for 940,000 square feet vacant, according to Keegan Coppin.

Copyright © 1988–2011 North Bay Business Journal
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Topics: Commercial Real Estate 7-18-2011 | Categories: Commercial Real Estate, Industry News

Article source: http://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/36513/commercial-real-estate-savoy-sells-three-petaluma-buildings/

Harvest bought the notable office building with a joint venture partner from The Swig Co. LLC and Angelo, Gordon Co. for an undisclosed sum. Tony Crossley and Tim Maas with Colliers International were the listing team on the transaction. Harvest Properties will serve as the property management company, with the CAC Group’s Charlie Withers and Ken Churich representing Harvest as listing agents.

Designed in the late 19th century French Beaux Arts style by Benjamin Greer McDougall as one of two original headquarter buildings of the Standard Oil Company, 115 Sansome St. was completed in 1912.

The prominent corner building at Sansome and Bush Streets consists of 14 stories and a penthouse, lower level and mezzanine and features 128,838 rentable square feet located in the heart of San Francisco’s prominent North Financial District. The property benefits from excellent access to freeways and public transportation, including BART, MUNI, cable car, the light rail system and ferries, with a BART/MUNI station within one block of the building.

The building exterior and ornate jewel box lobby includes original period architectural character and vintage detailing, high ceilings, copper trimmed operable windows and abundant window-line with frontage on Sansome Street, Bush Street and Treasury Place. Additionally, 115 Sansome Street has received a consistently high Energy Star rating since 2008.

Harvest Properties’ plans for 115 Sansome Street include removing the buildings’ traditional tenant improvement finishes on a speculative basis and, working with local architect Hooks ASD and general contractor RN Field, developing creative space highlighting its historic features and building out non-traditional, “un-corporate” floor plans in an effort to attract tenants seeking the type of office space more typically found South of Market.

“With 115 Sansome Street, Harvest offers tenants seeking non-traditional floor plans an attractive alternative to Class A office or commodity space in a highly desirable location,” said John Winther, founder and managing partner of Harvest Properties. “The buildings’ 9,000 square-foot floor plates subdivide well for small- to mid-sized tenants – perhaps appealing to the start-up, high-tech or younger companies interested in an open workspace environment with a retro feel and a great address.”

About Harvest Properties

Founded in 2002, Harvest Properties is a leading full service commercial real estate investment firm specializing in acquiring, developing, managing and financing commercial property, primarily through joint-venture investments in northern California. Harvest Properties strives to generate attractive returns for its financial partners and provide creative real estate solutions and outstanding service.

Harvest Properties portfolio consists of more than eight million square feet of office, industrial, RD and retail properties in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, please visit www.harvestproperties.net.

For Harvest Properties
Julie Wellik, 415-472-3878
jwellik@pacbell.net
or
Harvest
Properties
Sarah Irving, 510-594-2050, ext. 113
Partner

Article source: http://www.istockanalyst.com/business/news/5241757/harvest-properties-completes-purchase-of-historic-sansome-street-office-building-spec-interior-renovation-is-planned