A century-old brick building on San Francisco’s waterfront that Gap used as office space for decades has reopened as a fully renovated, all-electric headquarters prospect, painted stark white and topped with a roof deck looking out at the Bay Bridge. The Sobrato Organization, the Silicon Valley real estate developer and family office behind some of the region’s most iconic tech campuses, has finished a multi-year overhaul of 1 Harrison Street, the 180,000-square-foot property it bought from Gap in 2023.
From Gap Outpost to Silicon Valley Showpiece
Gap used One Harrison as office space for decades, and former chairman Don Fisher made the corner of the building’s fourth floor his own office, according to The San Francisco Standard. Gap had purchased the building at the turn of the century, and the Standard reports the retailer finally agreed to part with it amid a broader real estate retrenchment. That 2023 sale closed for roughly $82.5 million, per the Standard’s reporting, a price that followed Gap’s earlier $45 million purchase of the building in 1999 and reflected a deal valued at around $467 per square foot, according to The Real Deal.
Sobrato’s co-chief of real estate, Chase Lyman, first toured the building in 2022, when San Francisco’s commercial real estate market was in a severe downturn, office workers had deserted downtown en masse, and hundreds of billions of dollars in loans were slipping into default, the Standard reported. Lyman told the outlet the firm sees itself bringing Silicon Valley sensibilities to San Francisco’s waterfront, saying, “We’d like to think we’re bringing a bit of Silicon Valley to the city.”
A 1918 Building Rediscovered
One Harrison was built in 1918 and originally received shipments directly off container ships arriving at the Port of San Francisco, per the Standard’s account. For decades the Embarcadero Freeway obscured the building from view before the elevated roadway was torn down following the Loma Prieta earthquake, exposing the waterfront structure anew.
Sobrato’s renovation kept the building’s six floors and roughly 30,000-square-foot floor plates intact while reshaping how tenants would use the space. The firm demolished part of the sixth floor to create an outdoor entertaining area, added a roof deck with Bay Bridge views, and built a living wall in the lobby designed by Habitat Horticulture, according to the Standard. The building’s own marketing materials describe a terrace and outdoor space, a lobby cafe, and up to 160 secured parking spaces, per One Harrison.
Going Fully Electric
Sobrato paid a premium to electrify One Harrison’s HVAC system, the Standard reported, and the building now operates as all-electric, powered entirely by San Francisco clean energy. That sustainability push arrives as the performance gap between top-tier office buildings and older, non-prime properties has reached near a record high, according to research from CBRE, which found that high-quality, amenity-rich assets are seeing rising lease activity while commodity office space struggles…