The Bay Club, a fitness provider located at 150 Greenwhich St. in San Francisco, has purchased an entire city block to preserve its home.
The Bay Club
The Bay Club Company has secured ownership of one of its flagship locations, acquiring the city block that makes up its longtime San Francisco campus in a deal it says reflects rising demand for experiential fitness and wellness offerings, as well as its confidence in the city’s continued post-pandemic recovery.
Founded nearly 50 years ago at 150 Greenwich St. in the North Waterfront area, the hospitality-style fitness club network has been leasing its facilities — which today include a 130-year-old historic building at 1 Lombard St. and a parking structure at 1444 Sansome on the same block as its main Greenwich St. club building.
The campus is one of the Bay Club’s few locations in California that is leased and not owned. But that changed on Thursday, when the Bay Club purchased all three of the San Francisco parcels, totaling more than 150,000 square feet, from LaSalle Investment Management, Inc. for $65 million.
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“We are thrilled,” said Matthew Stevens, the Bay Club’s president and CEO. “Hopefully it’s a really good message to the world about the strength of San Francisco.”
Stevens said that the company previously had an opportunity in 2012 to purchase its San Francisco property, but decided at the time not to act on it: “We just weren’t in the right position as a company to be able to do that.”
The Bay Club, located at 150 Greenwhich St. in San Francisco, has purchased it’s longtime home, which had been leased.
The Bay Club
Now, with a decades-long tenancy in the city and its lease for the North Waterfront facility expiring in 2032, the club was faced with a choice between extending its contract or purchasing the property outright.
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While office building values remain depressed in the city’s broader downtown core, Stevens said that, due to the Bay Club’s proximity to the buzzing Jackson Square neighborhood and the recent “resurgence of artificial intelligence” and the city’s tech industry, the club is “paying full price” for the properties — and was willing to do so to ensure the continuity of its operations for decades to come. The deal comes out to about $433 per square foot.
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“San Francisco is our home, and we’re tripling down on it,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Bay Club has seen metrics around its membership and usage reach record highs in the wake of the pandemic, according to Stevens.
“The experiential category in general has really thrived post-pandemic. People came out and they were looking for community and groups and interaction and that has continued to build,” he said. “The Gen Z group is extremely bullish on experiential and experiences.”
The Bay Club’s current network includes over 35 locations and 150,000 members, and it owns $1.4 billion worth of real estate up and down the West Coast, Stevens said.
The San Francisco campus was launched in 1977 as one of the first co-ed athletics clubs in California. Today, more than 50% of its members are female, according to Stevens.
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“We had a simple idea in 1977: Build a great club for this city. We’re grateful San Francisco let us, and we’re proud to see it still standing on the same block where it all started,” said Bay Club Co-Founder Pete Jones.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has been focused on reviving the city’s vacancy-plagued downtown since taking office in 2024, categorized the Bay Club’s real estate acquisition as another sign that the city’s “comeback is happening.”
“This investment in our downtown is proof of that,” Lurie said in a statement. “Bay Club began in San Francisco and has been part of our city for 50 years. As our city’s downtown continues to recover, this kind of long-term commitment shows that energy is returning, and we’re continuing to build momentum.”
The Bay Club was advised in the acquisition deal by real estate firm CBRE’s Bay Area Capital Markets team, which includes Mike Taquino, Kyle Kovac, Jesse Millman, Kati Thabit, Jack Fleischmann and Mindy Nguyen. Kristin Macdonald and Sydne Levy of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP served as the club’s legal counsel.
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“CBRE is pleased to have assisted Bay Club in this strategic acquisition, which reflects the continued resurgence of San Francisco and marks a long-term commitment to the city from a deeply rooted local institution,” Taquino said.