Golden Gate University in Talks to Buy the Contemporary Jewish Museum Building on Mission Street

Golden Gate University is in early talks to buy the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s building at 736 Mission Street, across from Yerba Buena Gardens, the San Francisco Standard reported October 1. The Registry, a Bay Area real estate publication, reported the same talks on October 2. No price has been disclosed, and the university says nothing is signed.

“We’re looking for our future downtown home. We are in early conversations around multiple different possibilities. We don’t yet have an agreement in place with anyone,” GGU President Brent White told the Standard. The university has looked at roughly 20 properties for a new campus, according to the Standard.

Why GGU Is Shopping

GGU sold its longtime headquarters at 536 Mission Street last month to Lincoln Property Company for $32 million, according to the Standard. The developer plans an office tower on that site. That leaves the private university looking for a new downtown base a few blocks away.

Why the Building Narrows the Buyer List

The museum building cannot go to just anyone. Restrictions dating to the museum’s acquisition of the property in 1994 limit the site to cultural or institutional uses, the Standard reports. A university fits that description; an office developer would not.

The building is San Francisco City Landmark No. 87, according to the listing announcement from Newmark, the brokerage marketing it. It combines the brick Jessie Street Power Substation, designed by Willis Polk, with an addition by architect Daniel Libeskind. Inside are about 63,000 square feet of galleries, an auditorium, classrooms, meeting rooms, offices, retail space and a cafe. Classrooms and an auditorium are the parts that line up with what a university needs.

Newmark put the building on the market in March 2026. The museum said at the time it would leave the building at closing as part of a plan to reach a sustainable operating model.

Where the Museum Stands

The Contemporary Jewish Museum closed to the public in November 2024 and has not reopened. Staff fell from 30 to 11, according to the Standard. The museum carried $27 million in debt from its building project as of 2024, attendance dropped 50 percent after the pandemic, and contributions fell from $4 million in 2020 to $1.3 million in 2024, the Standard reports.

When the sale was announced in March, Executive Director Kerry King told KQED, “Our revenue and expenses have been out of balance for some time.” KQED reported that the museum was hiring for a curatorial position and planning exhibitions and programs with other institutions rather than in its own galleries. The museum said it was looking for a buyer “complementary to the Yerba Buena neighborhood cultural district.”

What It Means If You’re Visiting Yerba Buena

There are no exhibitions at 736 Mission Street right now. The other institutions around Yerba Buena Gardens, including SFMOMA, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Museum of the African Diaspora, are open. SFMOMA’s RM x SFMOMA exhibition opened October 3, and our list of free museum days in October covers when you can get into several of them without paying. For the rest of the area, see our guide to things to do in downtown San Francisco.

Sources: San Francisco Standard (October 1); The Registry (October 2); Newmark’s listing announcement; KQED (March 2026).

Photo: Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.