336,000SF San Francisco Office Building Makes Debut

Construction of Foundry Square I, a 336,000-square-foot office building in Downtown San Francisco, has recently reached completion. Developed by Glenborough L.L.C., the building will become the global headquarters of Barclays Global Investors. Foundry Square I carries the address of 400 Howard St. and sits across from Transbay Terminal in the city’s South of Market Financial District. Webcor Builders served as the general contractor on the project and Studio Architectures designed the 10-story structure, which also features about 10,000 square feet of ground-level retail space. Barclays pre-leased the entire property in 2005. “We’re pleased to have Barclays take the whole building, given the sluggishness of the office market in San Francisco at this time,” Andrew Batinovich, Glenborough president & CEO, told CPN today. But one whole building is not quite enough for the finance company, as it will continue to occupy 75,000 square feet at its current headquarters at 45 Fremont St., as well as 90,000 square feet in the neighboring, 500,000-square-foot Foundry Square II at 405 Howard St. Foundry Square I has a bit of a history. The former Equity Office Properties Trust first announced it would develop the building in 2000 in a joint venture with Wilson Investors, but the project came into possession of the Blackstone Group for a very short time as part of its $39 billion buyout of Equity Office in February 2007. Blackstone soon began selling off a significant amount of the Equity Office assets, including the Foundry Square I project, which Morgan Stanley snapped up as part of a $2.5 billion 10-property acquisition. Morgan Stanley and Glenborough own the property. With the opening of doors at Foundry Square I, only one more building remains for the 1.2 million-square-foot Foundry Square Complex to reach full completion. The development of both Foundry Square II and IV wrapped up in 2003. Glenborough, however, is not planning to erect any new office buildings in San Francisco anytime in the near future. “Right now there is a general slowdown in office leasing so in some of our core markets, including San Francisco, we need absorption to catch up with some of the new space that’s come online,” Batinovich said. “This is not a good time to go into the ground.” Headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., Glenborough is a real estate investment and management concern focusing on the acquisition, development, management and leasing of Class A office properties. The company presently has in excess of $2.8 billion of assets under management, including projects in the development phase.