All the tech companies flocking to downtown San Francisco and SoMa may be stirring up controversy, but their appetite for top-notch office space continues to spur developers to underwrite the restoration of a lot of great buildings, from the Yelp-occupied Pac Bell tower at 140 New Montgomery to Twitter's takeover of the old Merchandise Mart at Market Square. Now customer-service-software maker Zendesk has joined the pack with a new headquarters at 1019 Market, the site of the old Eastern Outfitting department store (just down the street from Zendesk's existing office at 989 Market). Last we checked in back in 2012, the building's old tenants—including a Chinese garment factory—were being evicted. Two years and $9.5 million later, the restoration, undertaken by Cannae Partners and Westport Capital Partners, is complete.
With the aid of preservation architects Page & Turnbull, the developers unmasked the structure's original wood beams and brick walls. On the facade, which boasts polished white terracotta columns, they also flipped on the building's long-dormant bands of 400 lights—which were switched off in the 70s—but rewired them for modern LEDs.
With interiors help from Design Blitz and One Workplace, Zendesk let the building's good bones do the talking, showing enough restraint that we can almost (almost!) overlook those oh-so-corporate splashes of lime green.
· $60M Conversion of Art Deco Gem 140 New Montgomery [Curbed SF]
· Market Street Evictions [Curbed SF]
Loading comments...