Autodesk Exit Tests $850MM One Market Plaza Loan as San Francisco Office Recovery Builds

Rithm and Blackstone face a 109,000-SQFT vacancy at the waterfront trophy as the SASB loan inches toward a February 2027 modified maturity. The $850 million single-asset, single-borrower loan against One Market Plaza is heading into its modified maturity window with a fresh hole in the rent roll.

Autodesk is vacating its 109,000square-foot block at the San Francisco waterfront complex when its lease expires in June, a Morningstar Newsflash dated May 29 confirmed, removing roughly 6.9 percent of the 1.6million-square-foot tower complex’s leased footprint and pushing occupancy down from the 65 percent mark recorded in March. The departure lands on a capital structure that has already been restructured once.

The loan, securitized as OMPT 2017-1MKT, was paid down to $850 million from $975 million in 2024 in exchange for a maturity extension, and sponsors Rithm Capital and Blackstone exercised an additional one-year forbearance earlier this year, pushing the modified maturity to February 2027, according to Morningstar. The loan has been carried on a lender watchlist as major tenant exits eroded cash flow coverage heading into the refinancing window.

Autodesk’s contraction is the latest in a multi-year thinning at One Market Plaza’s Spear and Steuart towers. The construction and engineering software firm will consolidate its San Francisco footprint into roughly 140,000 square feet at the adjacent Landmark building, the historic 422,426-square-foot structure within the One Market complex that is separately owned by San Diego-based REIT American Assets Trust. The exit follows a pattern.

Alphabet’s Google vacated its 320,000-square-foot block last year, retaining only its presence at the separately owned Landmark side. Visa listed its former 162,000-square-foot headquarters for sublease in 2024 after relocating to Mission Rock, according to industry reports. Autodesk itself listed 73,000 square feet of its One Market footprint for sublease in 2023, only a year after relocating its headquarters to the complex from San Rafael, where the company had been based for three decades. Leasing momentum has begun to push the other way.

Law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell took 44,000 square feet in Spear Tower, and fellow law firm Simpson Thacher leased 32,000 square feet of space previously held by Google. Colliers committed to 18,000 square feet in Steuart Tower as part of its San Francisco headquarters relocation. Morningstar’s newsflash also flagged notable tenant interest in roughly 100,000 square feet at the property, a block that would essentially offset the Autodesk vacancy if it converts to signed leases. Ownership shifted underneath the leasing story last fall.

Rithm Capital acquired Paramount Group for roughly $1.6 billion in a transaction announced in 2025, in joint venture with Blackstone, the institutional partner that has been on the asset since 2007. Rithm has since rebranded the operating platform as Elecor Properties and unveiled a $250 million capital improvement program spanning four buildings. At One Market, the spend will fund a redesigned ground-floor atrium, a new conference center, a fitness facility, an atrium bar, a seventh-floor sky bar, an executive lounge, and a rooftop deck.

The program also touches One Front Street in San Francisco and two New York assets. The macro backdrop has turned in the sponsors’ favor. San Francisco office vacancy fell to 28 percent in the first quarter, a 370-basis-point year-over-year improvement and a second consecutive quarterly decline, with leasing activity topping 3.4 million square feet, according to Kidder Mathews.

Colliers tracked vacancy at 28.7 percent, a 170-basis-point quarterly drop that marked the largest quarterly decline since the third quarter of 2019, and citywide net absorption ran at 1.4 million square feet for the quarter, the strongest in more than six years, according to the Colliers report. Artificial intelligence and advanced technology firms have led the demand surge, with AI-driven tenant requirements approaching 7.4 million square feet, near all-time highs. Capital markets activity has returned in parallel.

Cresa noted that international and institutional buyers deployed meaningful capital in the first quarter on assets including the Transamerica Pyramid, 123 Mission, 415 Natoma, and 45 Fremont, though three of the four trades reflected some form of distress, according to the firm. The $691 million Transamerica sale reset trophy pricing without distress mechanics. For Rithm and Blackstone, the equation now compresses into a tight runway.

Converting the 100,000-square-foot pipeline of pending interest into signed leases, executing the amenity overhaul, and refinancing or restructuring the SASB loan ahead of February 2027 are the three levers carrying One Market through the recovery’s uneven arc.