Dallas Investor Douglas MacMahon Buys More SF Retail

A Texas investor’s Union Square shopping spree bagged another retail building.

xt, bought the five-floor, 32,000-square-foot retail building at 240 Post Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

The exact purchase price has not been disclosed, but the 240 Post LLC that MacMahon created for the deal raised $33 million for the purchase. That works out to $1,031 per square foot.

The seller was Teachers Insurance & Annuity Association of America, which had owned it since 2012. Eastdil Secured brokered the deal, and Cushman & Wakefield is likely to stay on as the leasing agent.

The deal is MacMahon’s latest in San Francisco, with the investor’s efforts concentrated in the rebounding Union Square area. In August, MacMahon bought the seven-story One Union Square building for $42.5 million. Last year, he bought properties including the Burberry building at 225 Post Street in Union Square; after that, he picked up 11 retail properties in five buildings in and around Hayes Valley for $10.9 million.

Other recent Union Square-area buyers include Beverly Hills-based Bijan Chadorchi, who bought 251 Post for $30.5 million last month. Alaska-based Fountainhead Development bought 800 Market Street, dubbed the “flatiron” of San Francisco, for $17.2 million last month. Ian Jacobs, a scion of the Reichmann real estate empire, has similarly staked his claim in the Union Square area this year by buying up three prominent properties along Powell Street.

Union Square and other parts of downtown are rising from the pandemic ashes as tenants flock back to previously vacant storefronts.

Powell Street, for example, has attracted buzzy tenants like Nintendo and Pop Mart. Zara also moved back into the neighborhood, at 250 Post, after closing its flagship earlier this year. And luxury retailers like Apple, Tiffany & Co., Breitling, Rolex, Patek Philippe, A. Lange & Söhne and St. John have all set up shop in the area in recent years.

MacMahon’s tear across downtown doesn’t look like it’s over yet.

“My partners and I are long-term investors, and we believe San Francisco in the long-term is a great market for investing in real estate,” the investor told The Real Deal last year.

— Chris Malone Méndez