Salesforce Sheds 700K sf of Offices in San Francisco

Salesforce, San Francisco’s largest private employer, has stepped into a smaller pair of real estate shoes.

The locally based software giant has shrunk its footprint by 45 percent to 900,000 square feet of offices in January, from 1.6 million square feet a year earlier, the San Francisco Business Times reported, citing a March regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The 700,000-square-foot decrease included 200,000 square feet of expired leases and 500,000 square feet marketed for lease or sublease.

The reduction in offices comes during a shift to remote work led by tech companies during the pandemic. In 2019, Salesforce took up 2.1 million square feet of offices in Downtown San Francisco.

Last January, the firm said it expected to pay between $450 million and $650 million in “exit charges associated with office space reductions” as part of a money-saving restructuring that came with layoffs for 10 percent of its workforce.

At the time, Salesforce didn’t identify where it might make those reductions, nor has it since reported the termination of any leases in San Francisco, according to the Business Journal.

Last March, the cloud-based company listed for sublease 125,000 square feet of offices at Salesforce Tower, the company’s headquarters at 415 Mission Street. The 1.4 million-square-foot building is owned by BXP, formally known as Boston Properties.

Last April, Salesforce listed another 104,000 square feet of offices for sublease at the 450,000-square-foot Salesforce East tower at 350 Mission Street.

At the same time, it listed for lease a previously unreported 300,000 square feet of offices at the 817,000-square-foot Salesforce West tower at 50 Fremont Street, according to the Business Journal.

Salesforce bought the Salesforce West building in 2014 for $640 million. It started marketing the 300,000 square feet last spring, after putting 412,000 square feet of offices on the market for lease in the summer of 2022.

In recent years, the company has subleased, leased out or made available 2 million square feet of offices in San Francisco, according to regulatory filings.

Salesforce’s 875,000-square-foot lease at Salesforce Tower runs through 2031.

Through its 2021 acquisition of Slack, Salesforce also leases 200,000 square feet of offices at 45 Fremont Street, plus 230,000 square feet at 500 Howard Street. The firm listed both offices for sublease, then secured AI firm Anthropic as a tenant for the latter address at the end of last year.

— Dana Bartholomew