Well, this sure sounds like a positive, if kooky, sign for mid-Market as a Burning Man-esque tech collective is close to buying the 16-story building at the corner of Sixth Street that was once home to the Burning Man organization.

995 Market Street, which was home to a lot of WeWork space in the last decade after Black Rock LLC moved elsewhere, was one of many victims of the office-market crash in SF, and last year was surrendered to its lender — actually a loan servicer — for a fraction of what it had sold for just seven years prior. SFist reported on the sale for $6.5 million, about 10% of the $62 million it had sold for in 2016 when it was almost fully leased by WeWork, but that sale was actually just some sort of ownership transfer and credit back to the owner, and the building was put back on the market for $9 million in September.

The building, which spans 90,500 square feet, is now under contract for $11 million, indicating there was some buyer interest, as the SF Business Times reports. And the buyer is reportedly called Deep Ink Ventures and its subsidiary Berlinhouse, an entity co-founded by blockchain entrepreneur Jakob Drzazga, who is listed as the point of contact.

"Empty office spaces are becoming the new frontier," says a pitch for the building, which also indicates the project being named Frontier Tower SF. The pitch also makes a comparison to East Berlin after the Berlin Wall came down, when residents fled and abandoned buildings that then became arts and gathering spaces.

A post on the app Notion reposted to X gets into some more details, suggesting that existing "AI, biotech, crypto, longevity, deep tech, human coordination, neuroscience, music & art communities will each receive a 4,250-square-foot floor" in the building, "a blank canvas for pioneers to shape the future of how our society will live in a post-AI singularity world."

The post also suggests that "four floors will be dedicated to cross-pollination," including a "deep work" floor and a lounge. And the group has long-term plans to build 50 co-living units in the building as well — which makes this kind of like a higher end version of the tech bunk houses and pod hotels we've seen pop up over the last 15 years.

In this case, though, members need to apply to become "citizens" of the community to earn the right to pay $1,800 per year, or $190 per month, to get access to the tower, its workspaces, and events. (The co-living spaces may be a while out, and they don't have approval for these yet.)

As the Business Times notes, Berlinhouse has ties to Zuzalu, an event partly organized by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, which was an exclusive 200-person affair in southern Montenegro that took place over two months in the summer of 2023, billed as a "pop-up village" kind of like Burning Man, with more tech.

The group was seeking 300 founding members with "the right vibe" by December, and they say the transaction to purchase the building should close by February. Per the Business Times, Laurence Ion, a Zuzalu organizer, is planning a two-month "pop-up village" to kick things off in February, and a two-day psychedelic conference is scheduled for April.

Activating this building, which has been sitting empty as the IKEA store and food court opened down the block and as the LINE hotel opened across the street, will likely be a good thing for mid-Market, though the "vibe" being described here sounds pretty insular — and we don't see these folks necessarily eating at Tu Lan or Cancun.

Whether this will serve as a model for other experiments in office-plus-residential conversions remains to be seen, while a number of similarly older, dated office buildings languish on the office market.

It should be noted that a sleeping pod complex that went the forgiveness-not-permission route in establishing itself on Mint Plaza last year gained initial approvals from the city this year, but those approvals were revoked last month when officials realized it ran afoul of the city's affordable housing requirements — which require a $300K fee to be paid if some units aren't made available to low-income tenants — as well as the definition of a residential "unit."

Previously: Empty Office Building at Sixth and Market, Which Last Sold for $62 Million, Sells for Just $6.5 Million

Photo: Google Street View