An office property in a historic Gold Rush-era building is some of the latest real estate to change hands in San Francisco’s Jackson Square, an up-and-coming neighborhood that’s become a magnet for wealthy creatives even as downtown office buildings blocks away sit mostly empty.
An anonymous local investor paid $2.1 million to buy the vacant second floor at 716 Montgomery St., said Michael Gschwend of Kidder Mathews, who listed the property. The building encompassing 716-720 Montgomery St. encompasses three “boutique studios" that have been adapted to suit the needs of venture capitalists, artificial intelligence startups and designers that in recent years have trickled into the neighborhood wedged between Chinatown and the Financial District.
The undisclosed buyer adds to an investment flurry in recent years that is changing the landscape of the neighborhood, with some market players speculating that Jackson Square is becoming San Francisco’s new downtown.
Walking distance from Jackson Square's brick buildings and expensive boutiques, Financial District buildings are still half-empty following the remote work transformation brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Vacancy rates are “the highest in the nation by a considerable margin,” according to CoStar data, though a handful of large leases in the final months of 2024 have sparked hopes that the city may finally be turning the corner.
Well-known iPhone designer Jony Ive has quietly purchased more than $138 million worth of real estate in Jackson Square since 2020, according to CoStar data, much of it concentrated in a single block adjacent to 716-720 Montgomery St. Ive’s new design firm, LoveFrom, is headquartered at 809 and 831 Montgomery St., which he purchased for $8.5 million and $10 million, respectively.
Other prominent Jackson Square entrants include venture capital firm Bain Capital, which is renovating 450 Pacific Ave. after leasing the entire building in late 2022, and Steve Jobs’ widow, philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs.
Historic hub
Gschwend did not say what the buyer's plans were for the recently traded space on Montgomery Street that's been converted into office “condominiums” on the second floor and totals about 2,500 square feet. He confirmed that the seller was local gallery owner Shannon Collier Gwin, proprietor of the nearby Foster Gwin Gallery at 712 Montgomery St.
The property was built in 1849 along what was then San Francisco’s bay shoreline, on landfill consisting of mud and the hulls of abandoned boats, according to the National Register of Historic Places.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, the building contained a Chinese laundry, a brothel, and later, artist lofts that housed the fiction writer Bret Harte and the artist Ralph Stackpole, according to marketing materials from the brokerage. The artist couple Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo stayed there for a time in the early 1930s, when Rivera painted famous murals at the Stock Exchange and the San Francisco Art Institute.
The first floor of the building is occupied by Villa Taverna, an invite-only establishment that bills itself as “one of America’s finest private dining clubs” in the micro-neighborhood, which sits in the shadow of the newly renovated iconic Transamerica Pyramid.
In recent years, the roughly six-block neighborhood north of Union Square has become popular with tech world luminaries and other well-heeled investors.
For example, Chief, a members-only society for women executives, has opened a clubhouse just down the street at 735 Montgomery St., and an old warehouse at 717 Battery St. is now a private social club called The Battery. In 2024, a showroom for Private Islands Worldwide opened a few blocks away at 724 Battery St., connecting an ultra-affluent clientele with “private islands, mega-yachts and floating villas” for sale or rent.
In 2023, Ive shelled out $38 million for the roughly 10,000 square foot office building at 807 Montgomery St., which breaks down to more than $3,600 per square foot. In early 2024, he paid nearly $60 million — which observers agreed was well over its fair market value — to buy the Little Fox Theater at 535 Pacific Ave. from local real estate magnate Clint Reilly, who purchased the building back in the early 1990s for just under $4 million, according to CoStar data.
Powell Jobs' nonprofit, the Emerson Collective, is reported to be working on an AI-related startup with Ive, Open AI CEO Sam Altman and Thrive Capital. In 2024, Thrive spent $8.75 million to acquire 451 Pacific Ave., a 10,264-square-foot office building in a converted 1908 firehouse.
“Most industry players in San Francisco believe that the office market will see more positive momentum in 2025,” wrote CoStar Senior Market Analyst Nigel Hughes recently. “Funding of artificial intelligence companies continues to grow, with San Francisco-based enterprises taking the lion’s share of investment dollars.”
