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.
Sobrato plans to lease the entire building to a single tenant rather than carving it up, with Lyman telling the Standard, “We're looking for a long-term partnership.” The strategy lines up with a broader rebound in San Francisco's office market, per The Real Deal. Expanding artificial intelligence companies drove much of that shift, accounting for 30 percent of all San Francisco office leasing activity between 2023 and mid-2026, the outlet reported.
Gap's Waterfront Reshuffle
Gap's sale of One Harrison was part of a larger consolidation of its San Francisco real estate holdings. The retailer had already sold its $356 million Old Navy headquarters at 550 Terry A. Francois Boulevard in 2022 before folding its corporate operations into its 545,000-square-foot hub at 2 Folsom Street, located one block from One Harrison, Hoodline previously reported. That remaining headquarters, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, features tawny French limestone, red brick, and a skylit seven-story atrium housing a custom 60-foot-tall Richard Serra sculpture titled “Charlie Brown,” according to Robert A.M. Stern Architects.
A Deeper Push Into San Francisco
One Harrison is the latest in a string of San Francisco acquisitions for Sobrato, which has invested in the city's real estate since 2011, when it partnered with TMG Partners to purchase 500 Terry Francois Blvd. The firm later paid roughly $60 million for 808 Brannan in 2019, a building then occupied by Pinterest, and $71 million for 180 Townsend in 2022, which had been occupied by Andreessen Horowitz. Lyman said the firm is seeking more real estate deals in San Francisco and plans to pursue further commercial opportunities in the city, per the Standard's reporting.
The firm's roots trace back generations: John Massimo Sobrato opened John's Rendezvous in North Beach during Prohibition and purchased land in Atherton during World War II, with Ann Sobrato, John Albert Sobrato, and John M. Sobrato later helping grow the family business, according to the Standard. That business went on to build large office complexes across Silicon Valley for Lockheed, Amdahl, Apple, Netflix, and Nvidia. Sobrato built Apple's original 870,000-square-foot headquarters campus at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, completing the build-to-suit project in 1993 on a site formerly leased to Motorola, before Apple decamped for Apple Park in 2017, per The Sobrato Organization.
More recently, Nvidia acquired four office buildings totaling roughly 500,000 square feet along Santa Clara's San Tomas Expressway from Sobrato affiliates in late 2024 and early 2025, converting previously leased space into owned property, Hoodline reported earlier this year. The Sobrato family has also directed its wealth toward civic giving in San Francisco: in May, John and Sue Sobrato donated $25 million to anti-poverty group Tipping Point Community to launch AI job retraining programs, bringing the family's cumulative philanthropic giving to more than $1.5 billion.
