Visa Inc. will move its global headquarters to the Mission Rock development in San Francisco, committing to one building in the project before the San Francisco Giants and partner Tishman Speyer have even broken ground.
The credit card and financial services giant (NYSE: V) will keep its offices in Foster City, but will take an entire 13-story, 300,000-square-foot building in Mission Rock — space for up to 1,500 employees — across China Basin Channel from the Giants' Oracle Park.
The move is a big win for the Giants and developer Tishman Speyer as they get ready to build out the office-residential-retail development on 28 acres of Port of San Francisco-controlled land along Third Street. It also marks the growth of Visa's San Francisco base — its 112,000-square-foot headquarters at One Market St. holds 650 employees — at a time when some companies are taking a fresh look at space in and out of the city.
“For over 60 years, Visa’s roots have been in the Bay Area and we want to reinvest in San Francisco and Foster City to better support our talented team of employees and growing business needs,” Chairman and CEO Al Kelly said in a statement.
“It’s important to have a dynamic office environment that encourages collaboration, inspires creativity and reflects our stature as a world-class brand."
Visa, a longtime partner of the Giants, said it will redesign its current four-building, 971,186-square-foot Foster City campus, which it owns, to 575,000 square feet to house about 3,000 employees in its product and technology teams. The company declined to provide details about its plans for the roughly 400,000 square feet of excess space it will have in Foster City.
"We’ve been very thoughtful about this decision and are excited to have two world-class locations for our Bay Area community of employees and partners," Kelly said.
Construction will begin on both campuses next year with completion scheduled for early 2024. Visa also said it will close a small Palo Alto office, relocating those employees to Foster City.
The deal represents another huge tenant taking space in a San Francisco building that isn't even under construction yet. Other examples include Salesforce.com grabbing the entire office component of Hines Development's massive Parcel F, between First, Second, Howard and Natoma streets, and Pinterest Inc.'s lease at Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc.'s (NYSE: ARE) project at 88 Bluxome.
Vacancy for the market dropped to 3.8 percent during the third quarter, according to brokerage firm CBRE.
"It shows that there is demand for larger blocks of space where companies can consolidate their operations in a single location," said Colin Yasokuchi, CBRE's research director based in San Francisco. "Many of the larger tech companies throughout San Francisco have had to take a multibuilding approach. There really aren't many campus opportunities in San Francisco."
Mission Rock is part of a trio of privately financed real estate developments by Bay Area professional sports franchises.
The Golden State Warriors recently opened the team's Chase Center arena, a short walk down Third Street from Mission Rock. That development includes two office towers that Uber Technologies Inc. expects to move into next year as part of its 7,700-employee, four-building headquarters.
What's more, the Oakland Athletics have multiple uses planned around a proposed ballpark at Howard Terminal.
"The first lease agreement marks a critical milestone as we continue to make Mission Rock a reality," Giants President and CEO Larry Baer said in a statement. "We are delighted to welcome our longtime partner Visa to the neighborhood."
Rob Speyer, president and CEO of Tishman Speyer, said Visa's choice of Mission Rock "demonstrates the company's strong ties to San Francisco."
That commitment hasn't always been clear, particularly as various city initiatives and tax levies have been used by some companies to make the case for leaving the city; others are simply looking for more space. Financial technology company Stripe Inc. said last month that it will move 1,000 employees from San Francisco to Kilroy Realty Corp.'s Oyster Point project in South San Francisco.
"We have employees in San Francisco, we have employees in Foster City and we have employees in Palo Alto," Kelly told the San Francisco Business Times earlier this year. "We have no immediate plans to change any of that."
The multibillion-dollar Mission Rock project apparently did change Visa's focus about where it wants to be.
The $1 billion first phase of the project, which will break ground in January, includes four buildings by four internationally recognized architects. That part of the project is scheduled for completion in 2022-23 and includes 560 apartment units — including 202 below-market rate — 550,000 square feet of offices, 65,000 square feet of retail and 5.5 acres of parks and open space.
In all, Mission Rock will consist of 11 buildings with 1,200 units of rental housing, 1.4 million square feet of office and commercial space, more than 200,000 square feet of retail and small-scale manufacturing, a rehabilitated Pier 48 and eight acres of parks and open space.
Visa's potential new home is what is called Building G. It is designed by Henning Larsen of Denmark, with Adamson Associates and San Francisco's Y.A. Studio, and inspired by rock formations of Devi's Postpile in Yosemite National Park. Its podium — or "mesa" as the designers and developers call it — ascends from China Basin Park.
Staff reporters Blanca Torres and Mark Calvey contributed to this report.
Renderings and views of the site of the San Francisco Giants and Tishman Speyer Properties' Mission Rock development across from Oracle Park.
