Santa Clara County and Vicinity Development News (San Jose, Fremont: sales, real estate)

[darkeconomist]

We already have a thread for DTSJ. Thought it would be nice to add a thread specifically for development outside of the DTSJ core area and for the South Bay generally.

Starting off,

Mountain View:
In stinging defeat for Google, LinkedIn scores lion's share of real estate capacity in Mountain View's North Bayshore

The [Mountain View] city council handed LinkedIn about 1.4 million square feet, the lion’s share of roughly 2.2 million square feet of available commercial square footage for [North Bayshore]. Google came away with 515,000 square feet — enough for just one piece of its futuristic four-part campus expansion.

Moffett Field mega-project shows signs of life after long hibernation

UC Santa Cruz is looking to hire a consultant to help plan a piece of the massive, 3.7-million-square-foot public-private campus in the heart of Google country near Mountain View, public records show. It’s the first palpable sign of life in years and could suggest that a long-percolating deal with a new “master developer” is getting serious. Still, details remain scarce on just what the status is — and when it might finally move forward.

Fremont:
Here's what Lennar paid Union Pacific for 111 acres in Fremont

Lennar Corp. paid roughly $160.5 million, or about $1.45 million per acre, for a huge, 111-acre chunk of land near the new Warm Springs BART station in Fremont, public records show

Sunnyvale:
Sunnyvale's Peery Park becoming hot commodity ahead of new plan

Developers are already laying down early plans for roughly 1.55 million square feet of net new office/R&D space there, potentially sopping up more than 75 percent of the anticipated allocation for the district under the emerging Peery Park Specific Plan.

[wsugrad03]

Good idea having a separate thread for SC development.

Quite the stunner that Google's bubble city campus got the thumbs down. I thought it was pretty interesting. Of course, I think they were trying to grab land away from LinkedIn to intentionally limit the expansion of their HR competition.

But can we seriously do something about the Shoreline exit? It takes around 20 minutes from that freeway exit until you actually park. It's morbid.

[phantompilot]

Originally Posted by wsugrad03

Good idea having a separate thread for SC development.

Quite the stunner that Google's bubble city campus got the thumbs down. I thought it was pretty interesting. Of course, I think they were trying to grab land away from LinkedIn to intentionally limit the expansion of their HR competition.

But can we seriously do something about the Shoreline exit? It takes around 20 minutes from that freeway exit until you actually park. It's morbid.

I always felt light rail should have gone more circuitously through the business parks, because what would have been the harm? A little extra expense, but nothing major. Now with all the infill development putting the lines in to connect through down to Shoreline will be a real hassle. I also had an idea when I worked there for a different kind of light rail - a monorail on an elevated (pylon) design, which would be elegant and not intrusive and be able to move a lot of people short distances (such as from the light rail into and around the business parks) in a short period of time (it works quite well at disneyland).

I also think there needs to be a causeway constructed across the south bay (kind of just on the outskirts of the tidal wetlands area, not really in them per se....this would be easy to build because the bay is quite shallow in this point (eventually due to natural sedimentation processes the entire bottom right quadrant of SF Bay will all become marshland, then after that... grassy meadows). But this would be able to cut from 880 in the vicinity of Auto Mall Parkway over to Mtn View - could also have a split over to Foster City or San Mateo area for even greater utility. Im thinking of the kind of causeway they build in the Keys. Since they don't need to account for much tidal rise they can be quite low to the surface and unobtrusive. If you did two lanes each direction plus a bike path, it would only need to be about 70 feet wide, or about the width of a residential parcel. If you really wanted to get creative, make it a three spoke design with a traffic circle at the hub and the third hub shooting off to North First or McCarthy. Because currently the problem lies nearly entirely with 237. Its a mess, been a mess for 15 years, and can only get worse. This would solve that.

[darkeconomist]

San Jose @ Santana Row:

PRE15-084
2015 016581 AO
2850 STEVENS CREEK BL SAN JOSE
Shell (All Other Permits)
Prelim - Comprehensive
Under Review
Comprehensive Preliminary Review for a new hotel development, consisting of 138 rooms and with a proposed area of approximately 106,000 square feet on a 0.30 gross acre site in the CN Commercial Neighborhood zoning district. The subject site is presently occupied by a gas station.

[darkeconomist]

Palo Alto decision paves way for shutdown of city's only mobile home park

Palo Alto City Council vote allows Jisser family to close Buena Vista Mobile Home Park - Silicon Valley Business Journal

The Palo Alto City Council voted unanimously in favor of the park’s owners, the Jisser family, which will effectively shut down the city’s only mobile home park, located at 3980 El Camino Real.

Is there anything that could save residents?
A nonprofit. The closure application could make way for Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian to step in with a nonprofit to purchase the land and set it aside for affordable housing. Simitian has already persuaded the Board of Supervisors to allocate $8 million toward the effort, according to the Mercury News. City Manager James Keene has also earmarked $8 million for the cause.

The Jisser family, however, might be less than willing to cut a deal.

"I want to make it clear to the council that the park owner intends to exercise a constitutional right — and it's a constitutional right that every property owner has in the city of Palo Alto, the county of Santa Clara and the state of California," Margaret Ecker Nanda, attorney for the Jisser family lawyer said, according to Palo Alto Online. "It will sell its property when it deems appropriate to whom it chooses and for an amount it deems acceptable. It will not yield to pressure from the city to do anything but that."

[darkeconomist]

Why Southern Lumber, a San Jose institution more than 100 years old, is closing

Southern Lumber Co. will close after selling to Imwalle Properties - Silicon Valley Business Journal

“The market conditions right now are crazy, and I’m at a point in my life where I just don’t want to do this anymore,” said Jeff Pohle, 47, whose grandfather bought the business during the Great Depression.

The Monterey Road business will close to the public next month, with industry sales continuing for a few weeks after that.

The 3.4-acre site is in contract to sell to San Jose-based Imwalle Properties. John Razumich, a vice president with Imwalle, said the idea is to re-use the existing building while potentially adding more shop space on Monterey Road.

“It’s early on, but we’re confident we’ll find the right retailer for it,” said. “We’ll enhance the facade and update it and give it a retail feel.”

[darkeconomist]

Scoop: Google plans another glass dome in race for Mountain View space

Scoop: Google plans another glass dome in race for Mountain View space

Google Inc. is going to get to build at least one futuristic, glass-domed office project in Mountain View.

The development, called Charleston East, was not part of the contentious process earlier this month in which the Mountain View City Council gave most of the North Bayshore’s future development capacity to LinkedIn Corp. (instead of going with Google's plans for four glass-canopied projects). Yet Google can still move forward with the Charleston East project because it already locked down the office allocation years ago.

The world's biggest Web-search advertising company today submitted early plans for a 595,000-square-feet building on 18.6 acres it controls next to Charleston Park. Google has leased the square parcel from the city for years — but hasn’t moved forward with anything there until now.

[darkeconomist]

Irvine Co. unveils grand plans for apartments near Apple's 'spaceship'

The Irvine Co. submitted plans for a massive expansion of an apartment complex within walking distance of Apple Inc.’s “spaceship” office project in Cupertino, proposing to grow the Hamptons community to 942 units from its current 342.

Irvine Co. expects the planning and design for the project to take about two years. If approved by the city, construction would be set to begin in 2017. In a December city council meeting, the largest share of Cupertino’s housing-element allocation went to the Hamptons, the mayor said.

...

The Hamptons is located immediately adjacent to Apple Campus 2 near the interchange of Interstate 280 and Wolfe Road. Irvine Co. would tear down the existing 342 apartments to build the new complex, said Carlene Matchniff, the company’s vice president of entitlements and public affairs for Northern California.

[cardinal2007]

Looks like the project to replace the golf course in Santa Clara is coming along with planning, here is across from Levi's stadium.

Related Companies Santa Clara project revealed in renderings - Silicon Valley Business Journal

First concept renderings of Related Companies' huge Santa Clara project

For nearly two years, the Related Companies has been talking about building a "city center" in Santa Clara — a place that famously lacks such a thing. Yet the New York-based developer has held its vision fairly close to the vest.
On Tuesday, we finally began to get a glimpse of what this truly massive endeavor might actually look like.

Related executive Steve Eimer showed the most detailed concept images yet of the project's most important piece — a dense, mixed-use project called City Place that would include more than 1 million square feet of retail, plus office, hotel, entertainment and (Related hopes) residential. (Click through the image above for a slideshow of the project, which being designed by RTKL and Elkus | Manfredi Architects.) The presentation came before the city unanimously approved some new term sheets laying out a financial deal with Related, which I detailed this week here.

The renderings are still works in progress — the project is still in the early phases and not formally approved — but they show an approach that aims to pack a whole lot into an area where there's currently little in the way of services and amenities.

...

[darkeconomist]

Silicon Valley Business Journal: Downtown Campbell project gets go-ahead: 157 units coming steps from light rail

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/n...157-units.html

St. Anton Communities got the Campbell City Council's go-ahead on Tuesday night for a major development there, the first one in years. On tap: 119 apartments, 32 for-sale townhomes and six for-sale "duets."

The project isn't the only one. A short distance away on Dillon Avenue, Robson Homes received approvals last winter for a 100-unit project, which will be a mix of for-sale and rental homes. Robson President Mark Robson told me today that demolition is already getting underway. (Robson is working to expand the project slightly, by adding about 18 units.)