The next office megaproject in San Jose in now underway. Platform 16 is a 1.1 million SQFT campus within a 10 minute walk of Diridon, the SAP Center, Whole Foods, the San Jose Market Center, and the San Pedro Square Market. It's located off of Julian and Autumn Parkway.
The total build out will cost over $1 billion. Boston Properties made sure this would be attractive to our largest tech companies with large floor plates, 15-foot ceilings, and 16 outdoor terraces. There is a good chance a flagship tenant like Google will take the whole space.
The first phase will be ready in early 2023. For more information, you can find the official brochure here and a promotional video below.
Urban Catalyst revealed a few new renders of their plans for the former Camera 12 site, and it looks much better than what I expected. The shape of the theater is preserved but two additional floors are being added in the interior for additional office space (73,000 SQFT total). Rooftop patios will now be accessible from the 4th and 5th floors. Oh, and the 13,000 SQFT of ground-floor retail will extend onto the Paseo.
I still miss the movie theater, but this looks like it will greatly help activate the Paseo area. The project should be complete around the 2nd quarter of 2021. It is one of seven Urban Catalyst projects scheduled to break ground this year, all of which are in Downtown San Jose. The company plans to invest $700 million into San Jose.
It's a bittersweet solution to a key space in the middle of Downtown San Jose, but at least it is better than the empty shell that exists today. Camera 12 was my favorite movie theater, and one of the few three-story movie theaters in the country. I was hoping this could be repurposed into a high-end theater with luxury seats, cocktails, and upscale dining similar to the Showplace ICON in Valley Fair. However, it appear Urban Catalyst has a firm plan for the 70,330 SQFT site.
The plan is to convert the space into a five-story building called "Paseo." This will be interesting to see executed given the existing configuration. They will likely have to gut the whole building. The top four floors will support 73,000 SQFT of office space while the ground floor will have 15,000 SQFT of retail.
I am excited about what the retail opportunities could be, especially given the whole street is starting to fill up. Scott's Seafood is moving to the former Social Policy space on the same block and Hapa Musubi is a few doors down (one of Downtown's most popular eateries, often completely selling out of food daily). It may no longer be a movie theater, but I'm certain this can be an anchor for urban activity Downtown.
The Wall Street Journal recorded a brief tour of one of San Jose's most unique buildings.The Samsung North American HQ is actually two towers connected by bridges, with tons of open spaces and hanging gardens. At any location in the HQ, you are never more than one floor away from outdoor spaces. The building may look nondescript on the outside, but the tour shows how interesting and well-designed the structure actually is.
As an added bonus, their cafeteria is open to the public so you can go check out the architecture for yourself. You can find the Wall Street Journal video tour.
Bill.com was the 2nd largest Bay Area tech IPO last year and they have decided to make San Jose their new home. They are moving from Palo Alto to 132,000 SQFT at 6220 America Center Drive. This is an office complex in Alviso that also features three Marriott Hotels (including an Aloft) and HP Enterprise's Headquarters.
They are nearly tripling their space from only 48,200 SQFT at 1810 Embarcadero. That means more jobs for San Jose at a fast-growing tech company whose shares are now public. Bill.com is currently worth just shy of $3 billion and employs over 500 people.
Not all of our major development proposals are in Downtown or Midtown. Cypress Equities submitted a proposal for a 12-story office building and 24-hour gym in place of five low-rise buildings in West San Jose.
The 6.3-acre project at 3806 Stevens Creek Blvd includes 275,000 SQFT of office space, a 150,000 SQFT Life Times health club, 15,000 SQFT of retails, and a massive eight-story parking garage that takes up 495,000 SQFT [???]. For the urbanists out there, obviously this much parking is not ideal. Hopefully they will design the garage as flexible space that could be converted to another use in the future.
The project also includes a plaza at the intersection of Stevens Creek Boulevard and Northlake Drive.
Google is looking into The Assembly campus in North San Jose for possible expansion. They could take somewhere between 800,000 and 900,000 SQFT according to the Business Journal. That should be enough for 4,000 employees or more.
In addition, they have already acquired eight buildings over the past couple years in North San Jose near Alviso. Those investments add up to over $400 million. If there was ever any question on whether Google was serious about investing in San Jose, I think these actions are pretty clear.
The Coleman Highline will soon be home to a 640,000 SQFT tech campus for Verizon. The development is right next to Avaya Stadium and is conveniently close to both the airport, Downtown San Jose, and a future BART stop.
They are also in good company as Roku is moving their headquarters to the Coleman Highline project as well. At 730,000 SQFT, Roku made one of the largest investments in San Jose real estate this decade. Of course, these deals will be dwarfed by Google and perhaps others over the coming years.
Construction work on the Verizon buildings began two weeks ago and should be complete by 2021.
Yet another tech giant is dipping their toes into San Jose. Twitter is leasing around 30,000 SQFT in Santana Row, which is enough for 150 to 200 employees.
This is leading to rumors that they are eyeing the massive 360,000 SQFT Santana West project across the street. That would make quite a nice second headquarters, similar to Splunk--one of their Santana Row neighbors. Eventually Santana West will have a million SQFT of office space which is plenty of room for a tech company to stretch out into.
A prolific developer is looking to transform a corner at Almaden and Woz way into either an office or residential project, or perhaps even a combination of both. They have a preliminary site development plan with three options for the 2.6-acre parcel:
1.) All-office: 20-story, 1.15 million SQFT office tower with 977,000 SQFT of net office space.
2.) Mixed-use: 27-story office ower with 500,000 SQFT of net office space and a 27-story residential tower with 300 residential units and 300 hotel rooms.
3.) All-residential: A 27-story residential tower with 750 units.
I'm most excited by option 2, but honestly any of these three would be an asset to the Downtown San Jose area. KT Urban is working to secure city approval by the fourth quarter of 2020 and there is no publicized target date for construction.
Urban Catalyst is transforming the Lido nightclub building at 30 S. 1st, an adjoining parking lot, and a nearby building into a major mixed-use project. The six-story building will have 73,000 SQFT of office space, 14,000 SQFT of retail and restaurant space on the ground floor, and a whopping 5,000 SQFT rooftop bar. It will even have a glass elevator to take visitor from Fountain Alley directly to the lounge on the roof. This will be the largest rooftop bar in San Jose when completed and it will hopefully help take the vibe of this street up a notch.
Urban Catalyst also plans to build a water fountain on the corner of South First Street and Fountain Alley.
If everything goes according to plan, they will break ground on this building in 2021 after the current tenant's lease expires and complete the project in 2022.
We are getting closer and closer to the most significant mixed use project in Downtown San Jose history. Last month, the Station Area Advisory Group (SAAG) provided the first public viewing for the initial Diridon Station plan. The key principles for the project are locating jobs and housing near transit, connecting people to nature, creating partnerships, and making sure the San Jose brand is represented.
The numbers being thrown around for this project are surreal. 5.5 million SQFT of new office space followed by another million SQFT on the San Jose Water building site, 3,000-5,000 new housing units, 500,000 SQFT of retail/arts/hotel space, and 15 acres of green spaces.
It will take many years if not decades for this to all come together, but the direction is both promising and exciting.
The SJ Economy blog has released a slick interactive map showcasing major development projects in the area. The map was developed along with the City of San Jose's Public Works GIS team.
The number and scope of projects in the pipeline right have to be an all-time high. We're talking tens of millions of SQFT of development. When using the interactive map, don't forget to use the tabs to see ALL of the projects.
San Jose's Coleman Highline looks like it will be fully leased before construction is over. Verizon Communications will join Roku in leasing generous amounts of space at the property. Verizon is grabbing 640,000 SQFT across multiple buildings, which is enough for 3,400 employees. 2,400 of those will be coming from an existing campus in Sunnyvale.
Coleman Highline will eventually have 1.75 million SQFT of space across eight office buildings, two hotels, and retail spaces. Project completion is scheduled for 2021.
Now that Santana Row is wrapping up its final building, Federal Realty is setting their sights across the street with a new project called Santana West. The first phase officially broke ground last week and consists of an eight-story, 360,000 SQFT office building and a 1,750 space parking structure. Also, by breaking ground I mean there is already active construction on the site--it was not just a formality.
Federal Realty is trying to lease the whole building to a single tenant but is building Santana West speculatively without a tenant in tow. If all goes well, there are two additional phases that will bring the project to one million SQFT.
Unlike Santana Row, this is not a mixed-use development. In fact, there is no retail component at all--not even a coffee shop. The only likely public amenity in the project is the re-purposing of the Century 21 dome. This might seem like a missed opportunity, but two of the most successful retail projects in the United States are just across the street.
If everything goes according to plan, the building will be ready for occupancy in Q1 2021, less than two years from today.
If you liked yesterday's unique Market Street Towers renders, Sobrato has another flagship project right around the corner that we'll call "Block 2" until an official name is released. It is located on East San Fernando St. between S 1st St. and S 2nd St.
The project looks like several stacked glass Tetris pieces with multiple sky gardens between them. This would be one of the most interesting and unique buildings Downtown if it gets built.
The schematic shows new ground floor retail, which like Market Street Towers would fill a critical gap or deadzone Downtown. Currently the only thing on this piece of land is a surface parking lot.
Above the retail and lobby would be four floors of parking and 12 floors of offices. Each floor appears to have two sky gardens, which are four-story cutouts from the main building shell. Impressive!
Sobrato has just release some new renders for their Market Street Towers project. The building design is iconic. I can't say that I have seen anything like this anywhere else. While it looks like four separate towers, it is actually a single 584,658 SQFT office building with floor plates as large as 51,605 SQFT.
The ground floor will have 16,372 SQFT of new retail, which fills a dead zone between the Paseo between the Fairmont buildings and San Carlos Street. Currently this is just a surface parking lot. Speaking of parking, there will be 683 parking spaces and 152 bicycle stalls, something that will also come in handy on the weekends when the offices are closed.
My favorite part of the project is the roof, which features not one but two sky gardens with over 25,000 SQFT of combined space. The views should be incredible as you can see from the 2nd and 3rd images below.
To see more photos and 360 degree views, head over to the Market Street Towers marketing site. Tomorrow we'll post renders for another Sobrato project in the area.
Developer Jay Paul Co. has picked up 200 Park Avenue, which is across from CityView Plaza in Downtown San Jose. The company is proposing a massive 850,000 SQFT building that looks pretty unique. Not much else is known about the project, which still has to go through extensive approvals.
It is wild to think that 10 years ago we couldn't get a normal office tower built, and now we are hearing about one mega-project after the other. Google may not have to build any of their own towers at this rate.
Last week, Adobe broke ground on it's remarkable 4th tower in Downtown San Jose. At 1.3 million SQFT it is about as large as the existing three towers combined and will house over 4,000 employees. There will also be a new bridge over San Fernando connecting Tower 4 to the original campus
Adobe is already Downtown San Jose's largest employer, so this is a major vote of confidence for the area. If all goes well, the tower will be complete by 2022.
If this is what 4,000 employees looks like, imagine what 20,000 new Googlers will do for San Jose's core.
Roku, the popular video streaming tech company, is moving their headquarters from Los Gatos to a much larger space in San Jose's Coleman Highline. Currently they sublease 160,000 SQFT from Netflix, one of their initial investors. The new campus in San Jose will clock in at 735,000 SQFT across five buildings.
Roku has brown from 400 people at the end of 2015 to 1,111 employees just three years later at the end of 2018. That will make the company one of the top employers in the Downtown or Airport areas. Getting the HQ for another fast growing tech company represents a big win for San Jose.
The Coleman Highline is also planning further expansion to a grand total of 1.5 million SQFT along with two new hotels.
