Shvo is suing a longtime tenant of the Transamerica Pyramid Center.
The Manhattan-based property owner is taking Texas-based accounting firm PMB Helin Donovan and its successor, North Carolina-based accounting firm Cherry Bekaert, to court to recover roughly $450,000 in unpaid rent for a 6,500-square-foot office at 505 Sansome Street, which PMB began leasing in 2012, the SF Business Times reported.
The lawsuit alleges Cherry Bekaert, which acquired PMB in 2020, stopped making monthly rent payments for the office in mid-2021. The landlord is seeking that back rent plus an unspecified quantity of interest, attorneys fees and late fees, according to the court filings.
When Cherry Bekaert acquired PMB, it took over several of the firm’s office locations and many of its employees, Shvo’s complaint alleges. The accounting firm has accumulated $549,052 in unpaid rent, but Shvo plans to use a $100,000 security deposit to pay down part of that balance.
The complaint also alleges that the firm vacated the office sometime after it ceased making payments. Several businesses at the Transamerica Center that had been subleasing space from Cherry Bekaert vacated the premises in September, according to the Business Times.
PMB’s lease at the center runs through the end of 2022, according to the complaint. Shvo took over the lease when it acquired the three-building Transamerica Pyramid Center for $650 million in October 2020.
Shvo kicked off a $250 million renovation of both the 176,241-square-foot 505 Sansome Street building and the Transamerica Pyramid itself, in March of this year. Michael Shvo, chairman and CEO, said in an interview with TRD at that time that the renovations would bring the property “into the next century.”
He told the Business Times in March his firm had been successful in netting several tenants willing to pay more than $100 per square foot, prices at the top of San Francisco’s market, though he declined to identify those tenants by name.
— Pawan Naidu
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Commercial
San Francisco
Michael Shvo starts $250M makeover of SF’s Transamerica Pyramid