The Brutalist building at 536 Mission Street that houses Golden Gate University was up for sale in recent years, and university leaders thought it was a potential goldmine, given that it had been rezoned for up to 700 feet in the Transit Center District Plan.

The school had lobbied to be included in the plan, and was even in the market for a developer for the site as far back as 2009. But timing is everything, and when Golden Gate University put the property up for sale in 2022, after the downtown office market had basically bottomed out, there was not much interest.

"We believe this moment offers a unique opportunity to reimagine our university: how to address the changing preference of students and faculty for hybrid and remote learning; how our use of space can adapt to meet these evolving preferences; and what our San Francisco and global footprint should be in a post-pandemic world," said GGU President David Fike at the time.

The small school dates back to Gold Rush days in San Francisco and was founded in the 1850s as a night school, by the YMCA. In 1901, it was officially established as a degree-granting institution, and it currenty offers undergrad and graduate degrees — both in-person and online — in accounting, business, financial planning, taxation, and psychological counseling. (Due to declining enrollment and a low bar-passing rate, GGU shut down its law school earlier this year, something that some students tried to fight in court, to no avail. All enrolled law students have been transferred to two other schools.)

As the SF Business Times reports this week, enrollment numbers are up — thanks in part to online classes — with a total of 5,220 students in the last academic year, up from 3,281 students in 2019. But GGU still isn't using more than about a third of the space in the 210,000-square-foot building at 536 Mission, with many students taking advantage of hybrid learning.

And while the property is no longer actively on the market, the school sounds like they'd be willing to offload it at any time. Fike previously said that the school would likely move to a "more modern, size-appropriate campus in San Francisco."

Fike tells the Business Times that their average student these days is an adult with a full-time job who doesn't want to spend their evenings in a classroom. They want to "get on BART, and go home, and have dinner with their kids, spend a little time with their family, then get online and do courses."

GGU has faced consistent financial losses over the last decade and will need to find some new source of revenue, the Business Times reports, especially if it can't sell 536 Mission, or lease it out. After listing both it and a student services building it owned at 40 Jessie Street, the school did succeed in selling 40 Jessie Street — which is zoned for up to 500 feet — for $17.6 million last year.

Until the office market fully turns around, the seven-story building will remain dwarfed by all of the much taller towers around it. And it remains the last parcel in the upzoned district that hasn't been tapped for redevelopment — though several, including the beleaguered Oceanwide Center site around the corner, sit vacant and in limbo as developers wait for market conditions to shift.

Photo via Google Street View