San Francisco Business Times: New owner will convert Mid-Market building to an arts and culture hub
A Mid Market office building, 988 Market Street, traded hands this month for $7.3 million. (Google Street View)
By Hannah Kanik
Two nonprofit organizations teamed up to buy a Mid-Market office building that was once poised for a residential conversion, and plan to establish an arts and culture hub there.
The Community Arts Stabilization Trust and KALW Public Media purchased 988 Market St., the historic, 48,313-square-foot Warfield building, for $7.3 million, the two organizations announced Monday.
The deal, which closed Feb. 7, included equity contributions from CAST and KALW and below-market-rate financing from Community Vision Capital and Consultants, a community development financial institution.
The building was once home to tech companies like Spotify eager to take advantage of the so-called Twitter tax break and more recently was one of the city’s first office-to-residential conversion candidates.
The building’s owner, San Francisco developer Group I, in 2022 submitted plans to convert 25,000 square feet of the building’s office space into 34 apartments, while retaining roughly 15,000 square feet as office space. Group I was served a notice of default in February 2024 on a $26 million loan it took out in 2019, and the conversion plans never moved forward.
Now, CAST and KALW plan to convert the nine-floor site into an arts hub called Warfield Commons. It will lease out the majority of it to creative organizations, independent media professionals, artists, and cultural workers at below market rate. The model is similar to CAST’s multi-tenant hub at 447 Minna, a cultural hub and small performance venue in SoMa.
“The Warfield Commons will be a leader in arts and media, based right in Mid-Market, and a leader in San Francisco’s comeback,” said Mayor Daniel Lurie in a release. “There are green shoots everywhere in the city, with potential in every single neighborhood. And this project sends a message to everyone talking about our city without being here: San Francisco is on the rise again.”
KALW will occupy two floors totaling 11,000 square feet, where it will house new broadcast studios for its live on-air programming, production and podcasts, along with offices and classrooms. CAST will have majority ownership of the building and handle property and asset management while occupying one floor for its offices, meeting and collaboration spaces.
“Having a home in Mid-Market, at the intersection of so many different communities, at the foot of City Hall, adjacent to the Theatre District, cultural institutions, and public transit is an ideal location for this new vision of KALW as a vibrant community of media, arts, and culture to be situated,” said James Kass, KALW executive director in a release. “The Warfield Commons is a chance for people from the Bay Area to tell the real stories of their communities, coming from the heart of the city.”
Improvements to the building will be funded through the New Markets Tax Credit Financing, a federal subsidy that helps to fund projects with substantial and sustainable community benefits in low-income neighborhoods. The San Francisco Community Investment Fund committed tax credit allocations of up to $17 million to the project as well.
CAST in 2015 purchased 80 Turk St., a three-floor, 10,000-square-foot property it occupied since 2014 that sits one block from its latest acquisition at 988 Market St.
