Lincoln, Goldman Sachs List SF Office Building for $30M

Lincoln Property and Goldman Sachs are conducting a half-price sale for a century-old office building on San Francisco’s Northern Waterfront.

The Dallas-based investor and New York-based investment bank have listed the 84,000-square-foot Abbott Building at 1045 Sansome Street for about $30 million, or around $357 per square foot, the San Francisco Business Times reported, citing an unidentified source.

Lincoln and an affiliate of Goldman’s merchant banking division bought the building in early 2020 for $69.5 million, or $827 per square foot. They planned to add a roof deck and improved shared tenant spaces.

The listed price is 57 percent less than what the building sold for five years ago.

The Abbott Building was built in 1926 by Frank Howard Abbott to house a printing plant. In the middle of the last century, the family converted it into offices. By 2019, the city’s office vacancy was around 4 percent, and the historic building was 95 percent leased to tech, architecture and media firms.

A pandemic shift to remote work helped drive office vacancy in San Francisco to nearly 37 percent.

Today, the four-story building is 65 percent leased, according to CBRE, whose Northern California capital markets team is brokering the sale.

Marketing materials tout the building’s proximity to Jackson Square, a bright spot in postpandemic neighborhoods in San Francisco, as well as its rooftop deck and revamped tenant lounge. It has a sawtooth glass roof, open floor plans and polished concrete floors.

Office investors in Downtown San Francisco have been pushed by their lenders to sell buildings at reduced prices to deal with distressed loans backed by those properties. It isn’t clear how much debt, if any, Lincoln and Goldman have secured by 1045 Sansome.

In September, Goldman Sachs listed a 16-story, 140,000-square-foot office building at 351 California Street, which it bought with locally based Tidewater Capital in 2019 for $108 million, or $771 per square foot. The asking price was not disclosed.

— Dana Bartholomew