The new owner of the historic Armory in the Mission District plans to lease the building to manufacturing companies, with the exception of the top two floors, which the investment group hopes to convert to office space, according to Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who has met with the group.

In late January SF Armory LLC closed on the 200,000-square-foot property for $65 million, more than four times the $14.5 million that British pornography entrepreneur Peter Acworth paid for the hulking brick structure in 2006.

The buyer is an affiliate of Chicago-based AJ Capital Partners, which has long developed resorts and high-end social clubs, including the SoHo House in Chicago and boutique hotels in Miami, New Orleans, Napa and elsewhere.

At the Armory, however, the group has no plans to create a deluxe hospitality project, which would be politically challenging in an area of San Francisco wary of gentrification, Ronen said. The group also does not intend to continue using the drill court as an event and concert space.

AJ Partners “promised me that they were not opening a SoHo house and that they were going to do a code-compliant project that was going to respect the PDR (production, distribution and repair) zoning and not seek any additional office space beyond what was being sought by the previous owner,” Ronen said.

AJ Capital declined to comment. The sale was first reported by the San Francisco Business Times.

The sale reflects not only the city’s high-flying and resilient commercial real estate market but also the decline of the pornography industry, which has seen revenues wither as much of the content that customers used to pay for is now available for free on the Internet. While for years Acworth made a killing creating and selling content for membership-based porn sites under the umbrella of Kink.com, between 2013 and 2016 the company’s membership dropped from 50,000 to 30,000, and its revenues plummeted by 50 percent.

While some Mission residents were initially skeptical about a porn producer purchasing the Armory, Acworth eventually won praise for the restoration work he did on the brick Moorish castle, which had long been empty.

“Peter Acworth was a great steward of the building,” said Michael Buhler, executive director of the preservation group SF Heritage. “He took this significant historic building, which for decades was seen as an unsolvable white elephant, and turned it into a hot commodity in the real estate market.”

Before he sold the building, Acworth won approvals to convert its 40,000-square-foot drill court into a venue for concerts, parties and other entertainment. The new owners will honor the concerts already booked but don’t intend to retain it as an entertainment venue.

Ronen said she will be watching the building closely to make sure it stays active.

“A top priority for me is making sure it doesn’t sit vacant and become a breeding ground for blight and crime, which the Mission certainly doesn’t need any more of,” she said.

Kate Sofis, executive director of the manufacturers trade group SFMade, said small and medium manufacturers, as well as artists, will be lining up for space in the building.

“There is no lack of demand from motivated manufacturing businesses that would love to have space in the Armory,” she said. “It’s the last remaining large PDR space that is transit-accessible and located in the type of community where a lot of small manufacturers and artists actually live.”

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen