Source: San Francisco Business Journal
Reporter: Cory Weinberg
Date: January 20, 2015
Social media companies Twitter and Pinterest and mobile payments startup Stripe are hunting for hundreds of thousands of feet of office space each, multiple real estate sources said.
Their eventual decisions have the potential to drive the leasing market this year and next. As it is, tech companies leased 91 percent of the 3.6 million square feet of office space taken in San Francisco last year, according to CBRE.
The companies could head to Oakland to anchor the refurbished 400,000-square-foot Sears Building when it opens by 2018, giving the East Bay city a techie jolt. More likely, they’ll have their eyes on spaces like Kilroy’s 1800 Owens St. (known as the Exchange on 16th) in Mission Bay, set to deliver 650,000 square feet next year, or 510 Townsend St.
If companies need hundreds of thousands of square feet, they could also look toward Transbay buildings such as the Salesforce Tower (opening in 2017), 181 Fremont (2016), 199 Fremont (2016) or 303 Second St. (2015).
“I don’t think you’ll see a large number of those kinds of users go to Oakland. Having said that, I do think there are some indications that (the Sears Building) could snatch some sort of user from San Francisco who decides that San Francisco doesn’t have enough space,” Mike Sample, a broker who specializes in tech companies for Newmark Cornish & Carey, said at a SPUR event last week.
Stripe, which has received $200 million of capital from the likes of Sequoia Capital, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk, now leases about 27,000 square feet at 3180 18th St. in the Mission. It also scored a big coup by landing a spot as an Apple Pay partner earlier this year, fueling growth.
One source who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Stripe has looked at the 300,000 square feet available at the 500 block of Townsend Street, just west of the I-280 off-ramp near 6th Street.
Twitter has 760,000 square feet leased in Mid-Market. One broker who works with tech companies – and also declined to speak on the record – said Twitter is in the market for a few hundred thousand square feet and has its eye on Mission Bay now that Uber has decided to park its headquarters there.
“There’s a lot of energy going in that direction. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did something similar,” he said.
Pinterest has about 225,000 square feet across two buildings south of Market. One source said the company’s space need isn’t urgent because they just inked a new lease last fall. Pinterest, Stripe and Twitter did not return requests for comment.
Even if those companies don’t start expanding their offices this year or next, they’re increasingly thinking about future growth because of Prop. M. The city’s office space cap is likely to start squeezing the market later this year and possibly causing the current city average of $65 a square feet to increase at a faster rate.
“It seems like tenants are thinking five years out, especially the bigger ones who want to stay vested in San Francisco and think about how they will keep their headquarters in San Francisco,” Alexa Arena, vice president of Forest City’s San Francisco office, said at a Bisnow forum on Tuesday. “That’s clearly difficult for them because there’s not a lot of swaths of space where you have a single location to get the critical mass they need.”
Office complexes under construction or renovation south of San Francisco in Daly City and San Mateo will also hope to attract tech tenants this year. (It should be said that Reddit’s CEO was ousted over his proposed move to Daly City.) About 70,000 square feet at the Ferry Building in San Francisco will also likely fetch top dollar later this year.
Article Link: Tech Giants Race for More Space