San Francisco Prepares for Vanderbilt Campus Amid Tech Growth

San Francisco is poised to welcome a prestigious university to the city and it’s not a new University of California outpost.

Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office is in talks with Vanderbilt University to open a satellite campus in downtown San Francisco. Details about the endeavor remain scant as discussions with the Nashville-based school are ongoing, though the San Francisco Chronicle confirmed that Lurie has met twice with Vanderbilt leadership, as has Ned Segal, the city’s chief of housing and economic development.

Former Mayor London Breed announced intentions to build a historically Black college and university satellite campus in the city center as part of her 30 x 30 initiative, designed to attract 30,000 students and residents to downtown by 2030. But the plans never came to fruition.

Lurie is hopeful, as Breed was about her plan, that Vanderbilt’s expansion will revitalize the city’s urban core.

“Our administration is working every day to create a clean, safe and thriving downtown — one that draws people, businesses and investments back to our city,” Lurie told the Chronicle. “Welcoming a world-class university like Vanderbilt to our city would bring new energy and foot traffic downtown, and we will continue working to make that happen.”

The pending move follows a similar announcement last week in Los Angeles. The University of Michigan is planning to set up its West Coast campus for the Ross School of Business’ Executive Master of Business Administration program at The Grand LA, a mixed-use complex in the heart of downtown.

Under the agreement, the Ross school will occupy 20,000 square feet on the third floor of the structure and build out classrooms, conference rooms, workspaces and indoor and outdoor event areas dedicated to the MBA program. For more than a decade, students flew into town once a month for a weekend of classes hosted at local hotels such as the Beverly Wilshire.

Bay Area hotel foreclosure sales top list of state’s priciest transactions

Rumors of the Bay Area lodging market’s death might not be greatly exaggerated.

In the year’s first half, the average sales price per hotel room in Northern California was down 28 percent year-over-year to $129,500, according to a new report from Atlas Hospital Group cited by The Mercury News. The region’s hotel market has been plagued with foreclosures and loan defaults over the past year.

Two hotels in the Bay Area were the priciest hotel sales of the year so far, though both were foreclosure sales.

Earlier this month, the 500-room Oakland Marriott City Center went back to lender Invesco in a foreclosure proceeding that valued the building at $70.2 million. In May, BrightSpire Capital bought back the 541-room Signia by Hilton in downtown San Jose in a foreclosure that valued the property at $80 million. In third place in Atlas’ report is another foreclosure in Southern California: The 397-room Line Hotel in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, with the foreclosure purchase by Corten Real Estate Partners placing its value at $68 million.

“These three sales accounted for a total of [about $218.2] million of sales volume [in California], which is 15.7 percent of the entire dollar volume [of hotel sales] through the first six months of 2025,” lan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group, told The Mercury News.

AI companies grab space in SF, Sunnyvale

Artificial intelligence’s foothold in the Bay Area continues to grow.

In San Francisco, AI-powered procurement platform Zip is moving into a 75,000-square-foot space at 680 Folsom Street in South of Market’s Yerba Buena neighborhood, which once housed Macys.com operations across 250,000 square feet. The lease more than quadruples the company’s current footprint at 1 Sansome Street.

Financial services company Brex is also getting ahead of the AI curve as it doubles down on the technology in its products, grabbing about 100,000 square feet at 270 Brannan Street after going headquarters-less and switching to a remote-first model in 2021. Similarly, software developer Postman is ramping up its AI-powered operations with the opening of a new 32,367-square-foot office in the Financial District.

Meanwhile, down in Sunnyvale, AI-driven data and analytics giant Databricks leased 305,000 square feet across all seven floors at 200 Washington Avenue in downtown Sunnyvale, marking the company’s third outpost in the Bay Area and 39th around the world. The company will be the first office tenant at the new Cityline Sunnyvale mixed-use complex.

In February, Databricks inked a roughly 150,000-square-foot lease at 1 Sansome Street in San Francisco for its new global headquarters. Databricks also has a 47,000-square-foot office at 351 East Evelyn Avenue in Mountain View, which it opened in 2020.

Apple continues Bay Area shopping spree

Apple has made its third nine-figure office purchase in the South Bay in the span of less than two months.

The iPhone giant is in contract to buy Kilroy Realty’s Mathilda Campus in Sunnyvale for $365 million. It currently leases 581,429 square feet of the four-building, 663,000-square-foot complex. The deal, expected to close later in the third quarter, includes 505-599 North Mathilda Avenue and 605 West Maude Avenue.

The latest purchase follows last month’s news that Apple bought 615 and 625 North Mathilda Avenue, located next door to the Mathilda Campus, for $350 million. It simultaneously dropped $166.9 million for the three-building, 220,000-square-foot Cupertino Gateway complex at 10200 North Tantau Avenue next to its Cupertino headquarters, which it was also leasing.

Apple previously bought a 10-building campus known as Apple Results Way, which it had been leasing since 2011, from Swift Realty Partners in 2023 for an undisclosed price. Later that year, the tech firm spent $70 million on an office building at 10200 North De Anza Boulevard, down the street from a five-building complex that Apple bought in 2021 for $450 million.

Wells Fargo finds buyer for longtime SF HQ

Redco is snapping up Wells Fargo’s headquarters building in San Francisco’s Financial District.

The locally based real estate giant is under contract to acquire 420 Montgomery Street, months after a previous agreement with Forge Development Partners never came to fruition.

Forge planned to acquire the Montgomery Street building for about $135 per square foot, or $54 million, and convert the 13-story building into housing. Details around Redco’s deal for the 409,000-square-foot tower, including price, were not disclosed, though it was reportedly more than what Forge would have paid.

Redco is reportedly planning to keep the building for office use. Wells Fargo’s headquarters are currently spread across a T-shaped group of structures at the site with entrances on California, Leidesdorff and Sacramento streets.

Mosser offloads Nob Hill apartments after loan default

San Francisco real estate royalty Neveo Mosser sold a Nob Hill apartment building after defaulting on a $14 million loan backed by JPMorgan that was tied to the property.

A shell company linked to Cypress Capital Investments purchased the 75-unit mid-rise building at 1060 Bush Street for $16.5 million, or $220,000 per unit, earlier this month. The Mosser Companies CEO purchased the approximately 47,000-square-foot building in 2004 for $8.6 million.

Garrett Brasseaux, founder of Cypress Capital Investments, is named in the deed, while Mosser is named as the grantor. The sale price was below the nearly $19.3 million asking price on the listing.

Since its founding six decades ago, the Mosser real estate empire has acquired thousands of apartments in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles, growing its holdings to an estimated $1.5 billion in assets.