One Sansome Capitalizes on Bear Stearns Vacancy

SAN FRANCISCO—One Sansome is the class-A office tower known as Citigroup Center. Construction on the high-rise began in 1983 and incorporated portions of the Holbrook Building that housed the Anglo and London Paris National Bank, which occupied the site from 1910 to 1981.

Barker Pacific Group and partner PGIM acquired the building in 2010, which was after the Bear Stearns bankruptcy vacated the two top floors of the building. Fast forward to today and One Sansome Street is now 100% leased with 54 different companies now occupying the historic 43-story 719,000-square-foot tower.

“With One Sansome fully leased to a diverse list of dynamic companies, this landmark building now truly embodies what the new San Francisco represents,” says Michael Barker, managing director of BPG. “One Sansome’s tenants currently comprise a blend of innovative young tech companies and established longstanding powerhouses.”

BPG has taken what was once a typical high-rise office building and transitioned it into a diversified multi-tenant/industry investment. Meade Boutwell, Phil Tippett and Cori English of CBRE’s San Francisco office represented One Sansome in leasing the building.

“Over the last seven years, Meade Boutwell and Phil Tippett and their team at CBRE have been instrumental in helping us reposition One Sansome to meet today’s tenant needs–from high-tech startups to established regional consumer brand outposts,” Barker tells GlobeSt.com. “We have reprogramed and diversified the leasing mix in the tower and repurposed areas to add more leasable space creating a better ROI for our investment partner. We have made a substantial investment in capital improvements of the common areas, elevator systems, restrooms throughout the tower that has made One Sansome more desirable to San Francisco tenants.”

The newest tenant to lease One Sansome is the state’s Department of Corporations, which will move into a newly designed space in June. The repurposed space was recently converted from a mezzanine gym into usable office space, adding 5,389 square feet to the tower. BPG also converted 5,646 square feet of undeveloped space in the top floor into leasable office space. Since 2010, it has added more than 10,000 square feet of repurposed rentable space.

Citigroup is currently the largest tenant in the building, occupying 122,000 square feet across seven floors. Other notable tenants include the commerce startup Wish, Accenture, Sotheby’s, Travelzoo and Turkish Airlines.

“When acquiring the building in 2010, we had a big hole due to the Bear Stearns bankruptcy vacating our two top floors,” Barker tells GlobeSt.com. “Now that space is headquarters for web startup Wish.com. At the same time, Citigroup was reconfiguring their offices and that provided opportunity to update finishes and make the spaces more desirable to new tenants.”

One Sansome achieved LEED Platinum v.4 certification in 2014.