From today’s San Francisco Business Times:
Athena Health ditches San Mateo for SoMa
J.K. Dineen, Reporter- San Francisco Business Times
Dec 20, 2013
The final piece of the 680 Folsom St. puzzle has fallen into place.
Property owner Boston Properties has inked a 60,000-square-foot lease with Athena Health, a cloud-based electronic health records company. Athena will take the entirety of 50 Hawthorne, a stand-alone building that is part of the 680 Folsom St. redevelopment.
The Massachusetts-based Athena Health is moving its Bay Area office from San Mateo, where it occupies just 20,000 square feet.
The deal comes as Macys.com and Riverbed Technologies prepare to move into 680 Folsom St., a 521,000-square-foot tower that Boston Properties and partner Rockwood Capital are renovating and expanding. The project will be complete early next year.
Jonathan Allen and John Cashin of AvisonYoung represented the tenant.
“They wanted to tap into the labor force in the city and the opportunity to get a 60,000-square-foot Class A single-tenant building was very attractive to them,” said Allen.
Angus Scott and Amanda Emerson of the CAC Group represented the property owner.
The deal is the latest in the influx of San Mateo-based companies into San Francisco.
Silicon Valley companies moving to San Francisco over the last year have absorbed more than 700,000 square feet, as tiny startups as well as mature tech firms decided that they need to be in the city to attract top talent. Twenty-five companies relocated from the Peninsula and Silicon Valley in 2012 and 2013, according to a Jones Lang LaSalle report. Those tenants include 2,500-square-foot users such as Gigwalk, Detercon, and Seal Software as well as larger users such as Cisco-owned Meraki Networks, which leased 111,000 square feet at 500 Terry Francois Blvd. The JLL list includes four companies that came from Mountain View, nine from Palo Alto and six from San Mateo.
While fourth-quarter deals are still trickling in, Cushman & Wakefield reports that citywide vacancy declined by 20 basis points during the year, ending at about 9.9 percent. Rents jumped 5.2 percent to an average of $53.87 per square foot.