Lift Partners is back for seconds in South San Francisco, quietly buying back a familiar industrial asset at 100 Utah Avenue for roughly $31.8 million. The 120,000-square-foot warehouse changed hands in a sale-leaseback deal that allows the seller to remain on a short-term lease, keeping day-to-day operations running smoothly while ownership shifts behind the scenes.
As first reported by The Real Deal, Lift closed on the 4.4-acre site for about $31.8 million, with that outlet noting the transaction was originally reported by the San Francisco Business Times. The coverage points out that Goodwill San Francisco Bay had anchored the property on a short-term lease at the time of sale, situating the deal within a broader wave of investor interest in Peninsula industrial real estate.
Lift Partners lists 100 Utah Avenue in its portfolio with an acquisition date of February 1, 2018, confirming the firm previously owned the building. The page pegs the property at roughly 120,000 square feet and highlights Lift's repeatable approach to Bay Area industrial assets. The company has acquired smaller Peninsula parcels using prior funds, a pattern that helps explain why this particular warehouse found its way back onto Lift's balance sheet.
Why Lift Is Circling Back
According to The Real Deal, Lift recently closed its fourth discretionary fund with about $500 million to deploy and has telegraphed a focus on “hyper-infill” West Coast industrial deals. That fresh war chest, paired with a tight focus on close-in logistics locations, helps clarify why the firm is comfortable reacquiring a big Peninsula asset it already knows well. Infill industrial sites near dense populations still look attractive to funds that want steady cash flow and easy access to end users.
Peninsula Industrial Market Tightens
Conditions on the San Francisco Peninsula are not exactly buyer-friendly. Market figures from CBRE for the third quarter of 2025 peg industrial vacancy around 5.5 percent, with average asking rents near $1.85 per square foot, NNN. That kind of scarcity has drawn in major institutional players, for example, Prologis paid about $314.5 million this fall for an 11-building portfolio in Brisbane's Crocker Industrial Park. Limited land and resilient tenant demand help explain why contiguous industrial blocks on the Peninsula continue to command a premium.
Broker marketing materials and prior offering documents list Goodwill San Francisco Bay as the anchor tenant and put the site at roughly 4.4 acres, a layout that tends to appeal to logistics and service-focused users. Those materials detail the building's scale and lease structure in a way that makes the sale-leaseback format look almost inevitable, giving the seller liquidity while leaving the buyer room to chart the next phase once the short-term lease burns off.
What's Next For The Property
With Goodwill staying on under a short-term arrangement, no one is expecting immediate disruption at 100 Utah Avenue. The setup gives Lift time to map out a long-term plan, whether that means a targeted lease-up, a light repositioning, or a shuffle of the tenant mix. The firm's broader portfolio, including other Peninsula acquisitions, demonstrates a consistent acquisition strategy of buying infill industrial buildings and leasing them to a blend of smaller industrial and distribution tenants.
