Ridge Capital Poised to Buy SF Office Tower for About $75M

Ridge Capital Investors is poised to buy a 20-story office tower in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena for around $75 million, half of what it sold for a decade ago.

The locally based investor led by Trever Wilson is close to a deal for the 245,000-square-foot building at 33 New Montgomery Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

The seller would be lender New York Life Insurance. If the deal goes through, the price would be about $300 per square foot, or about $75 million, unidentified sources told the newspaper.

The price could cover a $75 million loan tied to the building that New York Life made to Connecticut-based Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors.

Cornerstone, now a Barings company, bought the office building in 2014 for nearly $148 million, or more than $600 per square foot.

In December, Barings listed the building with the five-story clock tower at New Montgomery and Market streets for $80 million. The tower, home to such tech companies as Bitly, Shopify and Stackla, was 70 percent occupied. It’s now estimated to be 60 percent full.

Barings later entered talks to sell the tower to locally based investor Rubicon Point Partners, though that deal collapsed.

The North Carolina-based investor then handed control of the property to New York Life, a person familiar with the matter told the Business Times.

The insurance lender turned to Eastdil Secured to put the building back up for sale, with more flexible pricing.

As of midweek, no record of a foreclosure or deed-in-lieu transaction for 33 New Montgomery had been recorded with the San Francisco Assessor-Recorder’s office, according to the newspaper.

If Ridge closes the deal, it would make its purchase of 33 New Montgomery the latest building to trade hands in the face of lender pressure. And it would make Ridge another local player in a growing number of repeat buyers of Downtown offices at discounted prices.

A year ago next month, Ridge bought a 13-story, 243,000-square-foot office building at 180 Howard Street in a lease-back deal with the State Bar of California for $55 million, or $226 per square foot.

— Dana Bartholomew