Presidio Bay CEO Plans “Office Resort” in San Francisco

The CEO of Presidio Bay Ventures bought a San Francisco office building last summer for a fire-sale price. Now he wants to turn it into “the country’s first office resort.”

The locally based firm led by Cyrus Sanandaji has filed plans to add Beverly Hills-style luxury to the 11-story building at 60 Spear Street, in the Financial District, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

Sanandaji bought the 57-year-old, 157,400-square-foot office building last summer for $41 million, or $260 per square foot. Nine years earlier, it last traded for $680 per square foot.

In the era of remote work, when nearly 36 percent of the offices in San Francisco were empty, the head of Presidio Bay hatched a plan to draw upscale tenants.

He would turn his office building into an upscale destination, with 16-foot ceilings just a block and a half from the Embarcadero.

His new plan calls for trophy features, including a 7,700-square-foot rooftop bar and restaurant, sauna rooms, cold and warm water plunges, saltwater floating pools, public co-working areas and a café bakery, among other perks.

The proposed restaurant, to replace a penthouse office, would take up a little more than half of the 13,682-square-foot rooftop, and be served by a private ground-floor entrance and lobby.

The 17,000-square-foot renovation would include a basement with a health spa and fitness center to attract and retain office tenants.

The building makeover, designed by Washington, D.C.-based OTJ Architects, would cost an estimated $3.8 million, according to the city filing. The renovation could begin late this year, an unidentified company spokesperson said.

The project is the latest attempt to differentiate with ambitious hospitality amenities — other examples include nearby One Sansome with Holbrook House as well as Michael Shvo’s Transamerica Pyramid.

Early this year, Sanandaji had outlined plans for “the country’s first office resort,” expanded to 170,000 square feet, according to the Business Journal. The building’s vacancy rate was undisclosed.

In January he summed up a vision for the building that included a health spa, fitness center, on-site medical services concierge, a rooftop bar-restaurant, and co-working and event hub accessible to tenants with smaller footprints than those of major tech tenants that typically receive such perks.

He also proposed a podcast studio and golf simulator.

Sanandaji additionally saw potential for further expansion in the neighborhood, imagining an urban campus of three or four “similarly positioned buildings” the firm may buy in the next 12 to 18 months.

— Dana Bartholomew