America’s largest bank plans to expand its offices in San Francisco’s Financial District in an effort to consolidate workers under one roof as it calls employees back in person full time, a first for the bank since the COVID-19 pandemic sent U.S. workers home in 2020.
JPMorgan Chase is close to striking a deal to renew and grow its longtime local headquarters to 280,000 square feet at 560 Mission St., a person familiar with the deal confirmed.
The firm currently occupies 215,000 square feet across six floors in the 31-story downtown skyscraper known as the JPMorgan Chase Building, where it has occupied space for 22 years, according to CoStar data. The term of the new lease currently under discussion is for five years.
A spokesperson for JPMorgan declined to comment.
The financial giant’s current lease was slated to expire in September of this year, according to CoStar. The move to significantly expand its footprint at 560 Mission comes as the firm is working to consolidate its San Francisco-based workforce, including former employees of First Republic bank who are still working out of that bank’s former offices at One Front Street.
JPMorgan acquired First Republic following its collapse in 2023 and immediately gave back 116,716 square feet, about a quarter of the 460,726 square feet that First Republic had previously occupied as that building’s largest tenant. The bank is planning to offload another 70% of its space in that building upon the expiration of the lease in June 2025, according to previous reporting by CoStar News. That move solidified lingering doubts about the bank's long-term commitment to the downtown space.
Back to the office
San Francisco faces one of the nation's highest office vacancy rates in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, when an abrupt transition to remote work drained office buildings, a state of affairs that has remained widespread in the technology sector.
But large employers such as Amazon, Starbucks, AT&T, Southwest Airlines and Walmart have recently stepped up their in-person work requirements, sparking optimism among office landlords looking to retain their portfolio occupancies. Hybrid work arrangements have been blamed for contributing to a national office vacancy rate that’s reached a record high of about 14%, according to CoStar data.
But San Francisco and Silicon Valley saw a flurry of big leases in the last months of 2024, with local companies such as Snowflake, Lyft and the online trading platform Robinhood all inking deals to keep or add office space, according to a CoStar analysis. “The uptick in large lease deals is a promising sign” for the commercial real estate picture in the city, wrote CoStar Senior Market Analyst Nigel Hughes.
Office market stakeholders have been waiting and watching to see whether the new sweeping back-to-the-office mandates could help trigger the beginnings of a recovery.
A healthcare conference sponsored by JPMorgan at the Westin St. Francis hotel over the past week was expected to bring thousands of visitors and a much-needed economic boost to San Francisco's premier shopping district, though it was nearly derailed by a 93-day citywide hotel worker strike.