Arc Light Apartments in San Francisco Sell to Tidewater

Tidewater Capital is adding to its Bay Area purchases with an apartment building near Oracle Park.

The San Francisco-based investor paid $37.8 million for the Arc Light Apartments at 21 Clarence Place, a block away from the San Francisco Giants’ home stadium, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The deal for the 94-unit apartment building comes to more than $400,000 per unit. Los Angeles-based Cityview and Newark, New Jersey-based PGIM Real Estate sold the Arc Light property.

Approximately 20 percent of the Arc Light Apartments are below market rate. The property also has two ground-floor commercial spaces and subterranean parking for residents.

It wasn’t exactly clear when Cityview acquired the building, though it began investing in San Francisco multifamily properties a little over a decade ago, according to the Business Times. In 2018, Cityview’s capital partner, the Los Angeles County Employee Retirement Fund, sold a 50 percent stake in a portfolio that included Arc Light and four other Bay Area apartment buildings to PGIM Real Estate for about $250 million.

Prior to becoming apartments, the Arc Light building originally served as a power station for the California Electric Light Company, according to developer Martin Building Company. The developer’s residential conversion was approved in 2006 and completed in 2012. That year, Cityview said it planned to acquire the newly converted apartment building for $90 million.

Tidewater has been snapping up properties across the Bay Area over the past two years, according to the Business Journal. In 2023, the firm raised more than $200 million in funds to purchase additional properties, making for a total of $1 billion in buying power for industrial, office and residential properties in the Bay Area, per founder Craig Young.

In March, the firm closed a $36 million purchase for 351 California Street, an 140,000-square-foot office building in San Francisco’s Financial District where the company is headquartered. Last year, Tidewater went on a shopping spree in Sunnyvale, buying two office campuses totaling 10 buildings in the South Bay city, spending $100.8 million on a seven-building tech campus and $65 million on a three-building office complex.— Chris Malone Méndez