S.F. media mogul sells theater property
As one San Francisco mogul shrinks his real estate footprint in the city, another is slowly scooping up an entire block in a coveted neighborhood on the edge of the Financial District.
Public records show that real estate investor Clint Reilly has sold the Little Fox Theatre property at 535 Pacific Ave. in Jackson Square that he’s owned for decades.
The buyer is listed as 535 Pacific LLC, a limited liability company that is registered to a Bayview warehouse that’s linked to LoveFrom, the design firm of famed former Apple designer Jony Ive.
The value of the sale has not been confirmed by the Chronicle — Reilly could not immediately be reached on Monday, and a representative of LoveFrom did not respond to an inquiry about the deal. However, the San Francisco Examiner, which is owned by Reilly, reported Monday that the four-story, historic brick-and-timber building traded for $60 million.
According to real estate information
firm Costar, Reilly acquired the former theater in the early 1990s for roughly $4 million.
The Clint Reilly Organization’s website describes the Little Fox Theatre building as “perhaps best known as the location in which Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas edited elements of films like Apocalypse Now and American Graffiti.”
Prior to the pandemic, the Jackson Square neighborhood was a popular landing spot for venture capital firms, and the former theater has operated as an office building in recent decades.
The property is around the corner from multiple properties owned by Ive, who worked for Apple for more than two decades. In 2019, he co-founded the
LoveFrom creative collective with fellow designer Marc Newsom.
Public records show that Ive owns two adjacent buildings at 809 and 831 Montgomery Street, as well as a third nearby at 100 Columbus Ave. that is used as a parking lot. He paid a total of $35.5 million for the three properties.
And, last year, a 10,000square-foot office building in San Francisco’s Jackson Square neighborhood was acquired for $38 million by an unidentified buyer said to be linked to Ive.
Additionally, public records show that Ive purchased two condo units in 2022 and in 2023 at 845 Montgomery St. — a condo building that sits adjacent to 831 Montgomery, for a collective $4.5 million.
Plans filed with the San Francisco Planning department suggest that representatives of Ive last year sought to merge his 809 and 831 Montgomery properties and turn them into a studio and meeting spaces.
On the block of Montgomery Street between Jackson Street and Pacific Avenue, Ive now owns three buildings, plus the two condos at 845 Montgomery St., one of which is a groundfloor storefront. The 100 Columbus Ave. parking site is behind the Montgomery Street buildings, and the Pacific Avenue building acquired last week is just around the corner.
Friday’s sale marks the second time this year that Reilly has reduced his real estate holdings in San Francisco. Last month, Reilly, a former political consultant who also owns the Nob Hill Gazette, sold his 5,200square-foot Sea Cliff mansion at 870 El Camino Del Mar for $14.5 million.
As of last year, Reilly and his wife, Janet, also sought to sell their 130-acre Napa estate, seeking roughly $22 million.