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40 Jessie St. in San Francisco sits behind the school's main Mission Street campus.

Office building sales have become a rare thing in San Francisco these days, but a small downtown property near Salesforce Park traded hands last week.

Long Market Property Partners, a real estate investment company based in San Francisco, closed Friday on its purchase of 40 Jessie St., a 48,500-square-foot building. The seller, Golden Gate University, listed the building last fall.

Long Market paid $17.6 million, or roughly $362 per square foot, for the Financial District property in partnership with DRA Advisors, public records show.

The building, which sits in an alley behind GGU's Mission Street campus, once housed GGU's Student Services Center.

Long Market said in a statement that 40 Jessie is fully leased and was recently renovated. The buyer described the property as a "research and development office building in the heart of San Francisco's Transbay neighborhood."

"We are excited to invest in a building that offers this unique combination of laboratory and office space in a prime downtown San Francisco location," said Justin Shapiro, a principal at Long Market, who added that its existing improvements are "well-suited to the current climate in San Francisco, where older office inventory is being re-imagined for more modern tenant uses."

"We believe that this building is unique within downtown San Francisco and will be a formula others will follow in the coming years as older office assets are repurposed," Shapiro said.

GGU did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Wednesday. I first reported last year that the university listed 40 Jessie and its larger Financial District campus at 536 Mission St. for sale. That 210,000-square-feet building has been occupied by GGU since 1964. Both buildings are located within a block of Salesforce Tower; Eastdil Secured is handling the property listings for GGU. There's no word yet on the status of the other dispositions.

At the time, GGU President David Fike told me that the effort to sell the properties stems from a continued shift to hybrid and remote learning, though Fike said the private nonprofit university will remain in San Francisco.

GGU, which traces its roots to the early 1850s, offers undergrad and graduate degrees in professional careers such as accounting, taxation, law and business. It has total enrollment of 3,387, according to its website.