Anchor Steam Brewery sold

[Drunk Monk]

The home of S.F.’s iconic Anchor Brewing Co. is on the market. Here’s the price
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[url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/author/laura-waxmann/]Laura Waxmann
Oct. 12, 2023Updated: Oct. 13, 2023 11:35 a.m.



The home of Anchor Brewery Co. has been listed for sale, months after the 127-year-old operation was closed.
Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle 2019
The property that for 44 years has housed San Francisco’s historic Anchor Brewing Co.’s “steam beer” plant in Potrero Hill officially hit the market on Thursday. 
Japanese brewing giant Sapporo Holdings Ltd., Anchor’s current owner, is seeking $40 million for the 2.17-acre property, which includes two buildings at 495 and 501 De Haro streets, totaling 108,728 square feet, sources familiar with the listing have confirmed.
The Anchor brand is also available for sale but is not included in that price tag.
Sapporo paid roughly $85 million for the San Francisco brewery in 2017. The company did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Thursday.
Real estate services firm CBRE has the listing for the property, which is being marketed for sale by Kyle Kovac, Mike Taquino, Joe Moriarty, Giancarlo Sangiacomo and Kati Thabit.

Brewer Eric Svendberg operates brewing equipment at Anchor Brewing Co. in 2019. The business was closed in July, and now the property is for sale.
Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle 2019
The listing comes three months after Sapporo’s board of directors voted to cease the 127-year-old brewery’s operations and liquidate the business as part of an assignment for the benefit of creditors, or ABC — a voluntary alternative to formal bankruptcy proceedings. At the time, the company cited a “combination of challenging economic factors and declining sales since 2016” as reasons for the closure. The brewery’s 61 employees received 60-day notices.
In June, Anchor halted its national beer distribution in an effort to reduce costs as the company’s management made final attempts to evaluate all possible outcomes, stating that its expenses increasingly eclipsed its revenues. The liquidation process began at the start of August. 
At the tail end of 2019, the Anchor workers ratified their first union contract, and their second contract was approved in June. Since the news of the brewery’s closure, the Anchor workers have been in the process of forming a co-op in order to make a bid to purchase the company and its assets.
Patrick Machel, of Anchor Brewing Co., said that the workers have voted in a board of directors for the co-op, and that he serves as its chair. In September, the workers launched a GoFundMe fundraising campaign that sought to raise $50,000; to date, they've raised $107,000. 
Machel said that the workers are "still very serious" about purchasing the brewery and have been engaging investors. He said that Sapporo has not shared the financial information surrounding the property and business with the workers and described the property's listing as a "step in a certain  direction."
"We can't really make a bid until we know the financial data," said Machel. "We're still in the dark about a lot of things."
Sam Singer, who is Anchor’s spokesperson, said that the creditors hired CBRE to market the brewery’s property and “because there are disparate buckets of value” — the creditors wanted to maximize the cumulative value of Anchor’s assets.
The creditors have also hired an investment bank to sell Anchor’s business entities but declined to name the bank.
“The union will have to, like other potential buyers, make a presentation to the investment bank, and the investment bank will weigh all of them equally depending on a maximization of value to the creditors,” Singer said.
Sources told the Chronicle that a range of investors have expressed interest in Anchor’s buildings — some that would want to maintain the site as a brewery and others that would not.

Taproom guide Philip Todd fills glasses with beer for a tour group at Anchor Public Taps in 2019. Anchor Brewing Co. was the nation’s first craft brewery.
Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle 2019
CBRE did not comment on the listing, but confirmed that the site could be “repositioned” under its current PDR — production, distribution, repair — zoning, which allows for a range of activities in industrially zoned areas such as research and development, storage, electric vehicle charging and shipping logistics. The firm noted that the City Planning Department recently expanded the permitted uses within PDR zoning districts to include laboratories. 
The Anchor plant is located in an industrial stretch of the city that has been described by real estate stakeholders as “Area AI,” due to a number of artificial intelligence startups taking up industrial spaces in the Mission, Potrero Hill and other adjacent neighborhoods.