Google to vacate 300K sf office on San Francisco waterfront

Search giant will leave One Market Plaza by next year, shift workers to Spear Street site

Google to Vacate 300K sf Office on San Francisco Waterfront

A photo illustration of Google CEO Sundar Pichai along with One Market Plaza at 1 Market Street in San Francisco (Getty, Google Maps)

Google will clear out of a 300,000-square-foot waterfront office in San Francisco’s Financial District.

The Mountain View-based tech giant will follow on the heels of Visa and vacate the three-building One Market Plaza at 1 Market Street, on the Embarcadero, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The firm expects to exit the building when its lease ends in April.

The 1.6 million-square-foot One Market Plaza has two highrise towers with a six-story annex, and an 11-story historic building known as The Landmark.

Ryan Lamont, a spokesman for Google, said the firm will move out of One Market’s 42-story Spear Tower, but continue to occupy the Landmark building. He declined to comment on how long Google plans to remain there. Many employees have shifted to remote work already.

“As we’ve said before, we’re focused on investing in real estate efficiently to meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce,” Lamont said in an email to the Chronicle. “We remain committed to our long-term presence in San Francisco.”

Google plans to consolidate much of its operations from One Market to a 400,000-square-foot office nearby at 345 Spear Street, unidentified sources told the newspaper, saying the company will likely renew its lease at that property when it expires next year. 

Lamont declined to comment on a potential lease renewal at 345 Spear Street.

Word of Google’s pending exit from One Market Plaza comes five months after New York-based Paramount Group and Blackstone extended a $975 million loan tied to the complex, which was scheduled to mature in February. 

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The partners worked out a deal to extend the loan for three years, with an additional one-year option, in exchange for making a $125 million payment on the debt, according to the Chronicle. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Working out such a deal would have likely been more difficult had Google announced its departure then, an unidentified “market participant” told the newspaper.  

“This trophy asset continues to generate leasing demand at record rent levels,” an unidentified spokesperson for Paramount and Blackstone told the Chronicle. “This space is leased through April 2025, and we are already in active dialogue with potential new tenants. We recently extended the loan through 2028 on attractive terms.”

One Market Plaza, whose rents are about 20 percent higher than other trophy offices, is 92.5 percent occupied, with rents upward of $100 per square foot.

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Recent lease deals include Capital Research, which renewed 79,000 square feet; Citigroup, which leased 76,000 square feet; Thoma Bravo, which leased 43,000 square feet; and GIC, which signed for 22,000 square feet.

Last year, Autodesk listed 73,000 square feet of the 284,000 square feet it occupies for sublease. Visa, whose lease expires in 2026, also listed its entire 162,000-square-foot headquarters ahead of its move to its new hub in Mission Rock. 

One Market Plaza was previously owned by Morgan Stanley and Paramount Group. In 2014, Blackstone bought a 49 percent stake in the complex for $600 million.

— Dana Bartholomew

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