https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2025/10/01/redco-420-montgomery-close.html
Story Highlights
Redco has acquired Wells Fargo's San Francisco headquarters for $55 million.
Redco plans extensive renovations to attract a large 'tech user.'
Wells Fargo has been steadily reducing its San Francisco office footprint.
Redco closed its acquisition of Wells Fargo’s (NYSE: WFC) longtime San Francisco headquarters on Tuesday, paying roughly $55 million for a building it plans to transform into a next-generation headquarters opportunity for a large tech user.
The San Francisco-based investor will immediately begin work on a multimillion-dollar renovation of 420 Montgomery St., a remaking that will cost more than what Redco paid to acquire the 400,000-square-foot building, Managing Partner Chris Freise told the Business Times.
Redco plans to renovate the lobby of 420 Montgomery St. to include several food and beverage tenants, including a coffee bar, pictured here in renderings.
Among the improvements Redco has planned: a full remaking of the lobby, which will transform from slightly dated Italianate-style space with a bank branch into a public-facing space featuring a roster of food and beverage tenants, including a coffee shop, a step-up bar and a restaurant. Patrons of the latter could walk through operable floor-to-ceiling windows to enjoy outdoor dining along a stretch of Leidesdorff Street between Halleck Alley and California Street. Redco also plans to transform multiple vaults in the lobby into a swanky, speakeasy-style amenity space and upgrade a 13th-floor penthouse, which already includes a full-service kitchen and multiple roof-decks, into modern amenity and service space.
The goal is to attract an anchor tenant — a user looking for 100,000 square feet or more in the building, Freise said. A tenant of that size could work with Redco to customize its renovation of 420 Montgomery St., which Redco will rebrand as 450 California St. (The T-shaped complex has a narrow arm to Montgomery but a larger frontage on California.) Rents could run in the $60 to $70 per square foot range depending on the intensity of the renovations a future tenant wants to implement, he said.
“We believe in the growing nature of big-block users,” Freise said. “And we think we’ve got — with the penthouse, the 28,000-square-foot floor plate, the location, the pricing — like, those four things really set it apart from all the other blocks of space."
Among the amenities Redco plans to unveil at 420 Montgomery, which will be rebranded as 450 California St.: a roof deck on the building's 13th floor, pictured here in renderings.
The deal comes together as there is a growing sense of optimism forming around the future of San Francisco’s office market. Tenant requirements — the amount of office space being sought by prospective users during a given period — hit 9 million square feet in the third quarter of this year, according to data from real estate services firm JLL. That is a notable uptick even from the beginning of this year, when requirements were hovering at around 6.5 million square feet. Freise said he’s aware of a number of tenants who are out looking for 100,000 square feet or more; as of the end of September, JLL was tracking 16 such requirements, the firm said.
Now Redco plans to capitalize on that growing demand — much of which is for highly amenitized, top-tier office space — at 420 Montgomery, which it will position as a sleek headquarters opportunity in downtown San Francisco. That is a pivot from even a year and a half ago, when Redco closed its first acquisition in the postpandemic era: it snapped up the 120,000-square-foot 300 California St., paying $28.5 million for a building it acquired in partnership with a handful of tenants who signed on to lease space in the building before the deal had officially closed, bolstering the building’s occupancy rate and helping Redco secure financing.
Wells Fargo officially relocated its San Francisco headquarters to a 620,000-square-foot leased office at 333 Market St. as of Sept. 15, it revealed in a regulatory filing that listed 420 Montgomery as a "former address."
With Redco having closed on 420 Montgomery, the bank has now shed more than half of its prepandemic San Francisco office footprint; in 2023, it sold an office tower at 550 California St. to Peninsula investor Roger Fields. The bank recently renewed for 257,000 square feet of space in the East Bay city of Concord.
Wells Fargo leased back approximately a quarter of 420 Montgomery for one year, according to Freise; the rest of the building could be delivered “tomorrow,” he said. The firm has plans to build out some speculative suites in the building, but details of its renovation could ultimately depend on the desires of an anchor tenant, should one appear.
“You can show up and choose your own adventure,” Freise said. “I think over the next year, that’s the opportunity, if the tenant presents themselves.”
Redco plans to turn basement-level vaults into speakeasy-style tenant amenties space, seen here in renderings.
An anchor tenant could, for example, decide whether to claim the 13th floor penthouse and roof-deck for itself or have that space open to all tenants, he said. Redco also plans to designate the building’s entrance along Montgomery Street as a private entry for a large user.
The 400,000-square-foot 420 Montgomery is Redco’s largest acquisition in San Francisco to date, bringing its San Francisco office portfolio to nearly 700,000 square feet. The Business Times named Freise its 2024 Dealmaker of the Year for Redco’s acquisitions of the beloved Financial District bar Harrington’s, 300 California and 400 Montomery, an 87,000-square-foot building that sits directly next door to 420 Montgomery.
Wells Fargo put 420 Montgomery on the market at the turn of the new year to a somewhat tepid reception from stakeholders, who said the building — which Wells had said it intends to vacate – would need significant investment before it would be attractive to today’s tenants. Freise, who spent two years walking past the building on his way to 400 Montgomery, said he too was somewhat skeptical about what the building had to offer, though that changed when he finally stepped inside.
Between the views of Jackson Square, the former executive office space on the 12th floor, and the 13th floor penthouse and roof-decks, which come with views of downtown and the San Francisco Bay, “I was like, this is really compelling,” Freise said. “It just felt like there was going to be someone at the right price point who was going to be very excited about it, too. And we firmly believe that.”
The Business Times first reported Redco had emerged as a buyer for the building this summer; the investor stepped in after a previous deal with Forge Development Partners failed to materialize.