Bay Area Campus Commands $162M

The largest multi-tenant office sale on the West Coast since 2022 has closed.

PSAI Realty Partners has acquired The Plaza at Walnut Creek, a trophy 362,399-square-foot office complex in San Francisco’s East Bay market for $162 million. The seller was Clarion Partners.

The Plaza at Walnut Creek comprises two multi-tenant buildings with an underground parking garage at 1331 and 1333 N. California Blvd. Both seven-story assets are rated as Class B properties by CommercialEdge. The 1333 N. California Blvd. asset was built in 1986, and its partner two years later.

At the time of sale, the property was 93 percent leased and has achieved a market-leading occupancy of 91 percent during the past five years.

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Newmark Executive Vice Chairman & President, Western Region Capital Markets Steven Golubchik, Vice Chairman Edmund Najera, Managing Director Darren Hollak and Associate Director Francesca Zappula represented Clarion Partners in the transaction. Another Newmark team including Vice Chairman Breck Lutz, Senior Managing Director Alex Grell and Managing Director Danny Bartz is in charge of the property’s leasing.

The office campus provides convenient access to the 680 and 24 freeways and proximity to Walnut Creek’s dense amenity base, including Broadway Plaza, Main Street Plaza, Olympia Place and Plaza Escuela. Downtown San Francisco is some 24 miles away.

A rare investment opportunity in a strong market

The slowdown in investment activity through August had dented office prices in San Francisco, according to a recent CommercialEdge report on the local market. Still, the metro remains one of the priciest in the U.S., with multiple life science properties changing hands.

Golubchik called the deal “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to acquire a top-performing asset in the region,” according to a statement, adding that The Plaza at Walnut Creek recorded meaningful occupancy and rental rate gains since 2019, bucking a trend.

San Francisco is a market where developers continue to bring a significant amount of new office space to the market.

As of June, 5.6 million square feet of office space were under construction across 25 office properties in San Francisco, representing 3 percent of the total stock.

Thinking about the city’s long-term office market recovery, Related California has recently proposed more than doubling the size of a mixed-use building in the city’s Financial District and including more than 300,000 square feet of office space in its reimagined $600 million plan.