Visa has opened its headquarters in San Francisco as part of a mixed-use development in a construction hotbed within a city struggling with weak demand.

Employees of the credit card company have started to move into the 300,000-square-foot building that opened in 2022 at Mission Rock, within the city's Mission Bay neighborhood.

Mission Rock is a partnership between New York-based developer Tishman Speyer and the San Francisco Giants baseball team to redevelop 28 acres of vacant land on Pier 48 near the Bay Bridge — and overlooking the Giants stadium — into a mixed-use neighborhood. Plans call for 1.4 million square feet of office space, 200,000 square feet of retail and 1,200 homes.

“It’s the newest product (with great building systems) to be developed in San Francisco and tenants appreciate that," Robert Sammons, senior research director at Cushman & Wakefield, said of Visa's new office in an email to CoStar News. “There is a growing list of amenities on-site, such as restaurants, outdoor space and housing."

Mission Bay's office supply has nearly doubled over the past five years, with developers adding 2.7 million square feet since 2019, according to a CoStar analysis.

The influx of new supply in the market has had a downside for office building owners, contributing to the area's vacancy rate shooting up from 1.7% in 2021 to 26% today.

Visa is the first office tenant at Mission Rock after preleasing its building at 300 Toni Stone Xing in 2019.

In addition to the new headquarters, other components to come online at the development include a 311,000-square-foot office and a 255-unit apartment complex. The project was approved in 2018 and the five-year construction plan commenced in 2020.

Visa employees are set to be located directly across from the Giants ballpark and about a half-mile walk from the Chase Center.

While San Francisco’s return to office rate is among the lowest in the country, Mission Bay has served as a bright spot within the city, where the vacancy rate is approaching 23%, up from the pre-pandemic rate of 6% and above the national average of 14%, according to CoStar data.

The decline in office attendance led to a move from online review platform Yelp to put its 161,000-square-foot lease at 140 New Montgomery up for sublease in 2021 as it announced a transition to a remote-first work model. In March, Glassdoor closed its remaining U.S. offices in San Francisco and Chicago, according to previous reporting by CoStar News.

Mission Bay, however, has been one of a limited number of regions to attract new tenants and retain existing ones, according to CoStar data.

Software company Cisco renewed its 247,000-square-foot lease at 500 Terry Francois Blvd. in the city last year, while ChatGPT maker OpenAI in November subleased almost 500,000 square feet of Uber’s former headquarters in the one of the city's largest leases since 2018.

OpenAI’s lease may have had larger implications, according to Sammons. The move put Mission Bay “on the radar,” and drove more interest to the neighborhood.

Artificial intelligence companies are looking for more space in the area, according to reports.

The larger San Francisco market saw a 5.4% increase to its office pipeline since 2019, but a significant amount of that inventory is life science projects on the Peninsula, a more in-demand segment, according to CoStar data. Groundbreakings for traditional offices became few and far between during the pandemic as a result of stalled demand, according to CoStar researchers.

Similar to AI, life science tenants have helped to buoy the San Francisco office market in recent years, according to a report by CBRE.

Lab vacancy rates have been in the single digits since the pandemic, but shot up to 20% in 2024 due to an influx of supply entering the market.

Mission Rock joins several mixed-use developments underway across California. Elsewhere in the Bay Area in Santa Clara, one of the South Bay’s largest cities, Related Cos.’ California division is working to build 1,700 housing units and 15 million square feet of commercial space near Levi's Stadium, the home of the San Francisco 49ers.

"Mixed-use is where it’s at these days, even within a city," Sammons said.

In San Diego, Houston-based Hines Global Trust recently began construction on its Riverwalk development, a $4 billion mixed-use redevelopment of a 200-acre golf course into 4,300 homes and 1 million square feet of office.

Mixed-use developments continue to gain in popularity, according to a report by Matthews Real Estate. The “vast majority” of Americans prefer walkable communities, according to the real estate company, and more than half of all Americans would either walk or bike instead of driving if they had the choice.

“Mixed-use developments attract a wider market segment by offering a multitude of retail, residential, and commercial spaces in one location,” the report said. “This increases the potential pool of buyers and tenants, improving market demand for the development.”