Mack Selling $100M Debt Tied To Historic San Francisco Federal Reserve Building
Mack Real Estate Group of New York City is offloading nonperforming debt totaling $100M that is secured by the former Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco building at 301 Battery St. in the city’s North Financial District.
The debt is being brought to market by CBRE, the San Francisco Business Times reported on Monday. The 208K SF building features an entry with eight 25-foot-tall marble columns facing Sansome Street. The building housed the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco for more than six decades upon its completion in 1924.
The commercial lending and debt investment division of Mack Real Estate funded the $143M acquisition of 301 Battery St. for New York-based RFR Realty in February 2020, The Real Deal reported. Less than one month later, pandemic lockdowns toppled San Francisco’s once-lofty office market.
Although demand for downtown and Financial District office space has started to rebound, driven primarily by a surge in leasing from artificial intelligence companies, offices in the city are still being valued at a fraction of their former prices.
Mack Real Estate Group would likely offer the debt at about $90M, which values the space at roughly $432 per SF, the SFBT reported. RFR’s valuation was about $780 per SF, according to 2020 reporting.
Potential buyers have multiple options, including taking ownership of the building either through foreclosure or by acquiring the nonperforming debt, or working directly with RFR to complete a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure arrangement.
The building was previously acquired in 2005 by Bently Holdings for $46.8M, the San Francisco Business Times reported. A $35M renovation and name change to Bently Reserve turned the banking hall on the ground floor of the property into a prominent events and weddings venue that has since closed.
