DocuSign to shed office space in Downtown San Francisco

Software company DocuSign will trim 57,000 square feet from its corporate headquarters in Downtown San Francisco.

The document-signing tech firm has renewed a lease for 93,000 square feet at 221 Main Street, down from 150,000 square feet late last year, the San Francisco Business Times reported, citing regulatory filings.

The 16-story office building is owned by Columbia Property Trust, based in New York. Terms of the lease were not disclosed.

The lease renewal marks a sliver of sunshine in a city where one in four offices remains empty during the era of remote work.

Even as some tenants are recommitting to office space, much of the city’s leasing activity stems from companies consolidating or downsizing their office footprints as their long-term needs remain unclear, according to the Business Times.

Architecture firm Gensler last month inked a new lease at 220 Montgomery Street in the city’s Financial District that’s 10,000 square feet smaller than its former office at 45 Fremont Street.

Tech company Pinterest is letting go of a two-floor office in South of Market once its lease expires in June.

Salesforce, San Francisco’s largest private employer and occupant of its tallest building, is trimming workers and has vowed to ditch real estate holdings.

To date, the city’s leasing gains have not been enough to counteract rising office vacancy, which according to data released by brokerage CBRE hit 27.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. That’s up from 4 percent office vacancy in 2019.

“Most of the deals that occurred this quarter were renewals that either didn’t involve any change in space, or a decrease in the amount of space,” Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center, told the Business Times.

Renewal deals such as DocuSign’s made up 65 percent of the market’s fourth-quarter leasing activity, which totaled just over 1 million square feet., up from 878,000 square feet in the third quarter.

Notable deals late last year included a rare renewal plus expansion by Sigma Computing, which leased 83,000 square feet at 116 New Montgomery Street, where it had leased 53,000 square feet earlier in 2022.

— Dana Bartholomew

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