THE BAY AREA | Projects from San Francisco's Surrounding 8 Counties

[krudmonk]

It's good to see all those community outreach meetings paid off. Someone at city hall knows how to seduce the NIMBYs.

[San Frangelino]

oops

[BTinSF]

Friday, August 28, 2009
Redwood City may spark office boom
Pacific Shores complex could double in size under new plan
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen

Owners of sprawling Pacific Shores would be allowed to double the waterfront office complex to more than 3.4 million square feet under Redwood City’s new general plan.

“Even right now there is capacity for more development there — surface parking lots can provide area for new buildings as well as decked parking structures while maintaining the integrity of the campus,” said Redwood City Planning Director Jill Ekas.

The current proposed plan, which is slated for completion this fall, would boost Pacific Shores’ allowable floor-area-ratio, or FAR, to 75 percent, meaning that for every square foot of ground there could be .75 square foot of building. The current campus has a FAR of about 34 percent.

In anticipation of the new zoning, Starwood has hired Sares Regis Group of Northern California to manage the entitlements for the new construction on the 106-acre waterfront campus. Redwood City planning officials say they have met with Jeffrey Birdwell, president of Sares Regis’ commercial division, to begin general discussions on future expansion. Birdwell said no application has been filed and no decision has been made about when they may seek formal entitlements.

“We are in the preliminary stages of discussions with the city,” said Birdwell. “We will do some land planning to look at what is an appropriate allocation of density. There is the potential to double the density.”

Pacific Shores is one of three office campuses that Redwood City is looking at expanding as a way to grow tax revenue and create jobs in the city.

The others are the 46-acre Midpoint Technology Park, where Stanford University has proposed to build 1.5 million square feet of office space; and the 623,000-square-foot Seaport Center, where Abbott Labs entitled a 500,000-square-foot expansion, but allowed the entitlements to expire. All three projects feature vast surface parking lots that could be replaced with office buildings and decked parking garages. The Stanford proposal at Midpoint also calls for decked parking.

“We are considering a higher build-out in the future for those kinds of low- to mid-rise research and development and life science office parks,” said Ekas.

Conceived during the turn-of-the-century dot-com boom, the massive waterfront office complex was 90 percent preleased before developer Jay Paul broke ground in 2000. By 2002, the bubble had burst, emptying roughly half the project.

Recent years have been kinder. Pacific Shores gradually filled back up with tech and biotech tenants like PDI/DreamWorks and Eidos. Starwood bought the 10 steel and glass buildings for $800 million in 2006, later selling two to Shorenstein Properties for $250 million.

While this recession has increased vacancies in the Redwood Shores submarket to 13.3 percent from 9 percent, Pacific Shores is holding up fairly well with about a 10 percent vacancy rate, according to Mike Moran of NAI BT Commercial, who is on the property leasing team. Moran said Pacific Shores has been forced to take a pass on three large leasing requirements this year because it lacked the space to accommodate the tenants.

“The fact that this project has weathered this significant downturn with 90 percent occupancy proves that the product works,” said Moran.

Ekas emphasized that major traffic issues would need to be addressed, particularly the interchange of U.S. 101 and Route 84. She said that one of the more exciting aspects of the new general plan is a proposed street car system that could shuttle workers along Seaport Boulevard between downtown and Pacific Shores and also along Broadway between Midpoint Technology Park. A freight rail spur already runs along Seaport Boulevard, which could make it easier to build a street car line there. The city is also looking at running ferry service to Pacific Shores as part of the existing Bay Area Water Transit Authority service.

Ekas said Starwood and Sares Regis could either file an application after the general plan is complete or file it now based on the existing draft. She said the city has been expecting the Pacific Shores owner to seek an expansion, but “was a little intrigued they are coming forward now when we would not expect office expansion.”

While the possibility of building housing at Pacific Shores has been discussed in the past, the current general plan does not envision any residential development there, said Ekas. Instead, planning officials are pushing housing downtown, where as many as 3,700 units could be built, as well as on transit corridors like El Camino Real and Woodside Road.

“We have a real focus on building a new kind of vibrant downtown,” Ekas said.

Email J.K. Dineen at jkdineen@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4971

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...31/story1.html

[BTinSF]

Friday, October 23, 2009
Shorenstein, SKS near $1B project
Bio opportunity in South S.F.
San Francisco Business Times - by J.K. Dineen

Shorenstein Properties and SKS Investments have a preliminary agreement with the city of South San Francisco to build 2.3 million square feet of waterfront biotech research and development space at Oyster Point.

The developers have a memorandum of understanding recently approved by the City Council, and the city’s planning department has started the environmental review, according to Marty Van Duyn, the city’s director of economic development. The project would include about 20 percent more space than the earlier conceptual plans.

“It’s a $1 billion project,” said Van Duyn. “It’s a lot of good R&D and office, and they are helping us out quite a bit in realizing our long-term goals for the harbor in terms of recreation and retail and open space. It presents a unique opportunity to marry some of the city’s goals with a major development. This area has languished for a long period of time. It has not been as popular as it should be.”

The project comes as the Water Emergency Transportation Authority — an entity created to expand Bay Area ferry service — starts work this week on a $50 million ferry terminal at Oyster Point. The new ferry service, which will shuttle workers from Oyster Point to Oakland’s Jack London Square, would be connected to the Shorenstein/SKS buildings by a network of trails, recreation fields and waterfront plazas. The service is expected to average 900 passenger trips a day when it begins and will be complete by summer of 2011.

The agreement with the city comes 18 months after Shorenstein and SKS paid $85 million for 375-389 Oyster Point Blvd., now home to 400,000 square feet of single-story industrial buildings and a 235-berth marina. While the Shorenstein/SKS property itself is zoned for 1 million square feet of biotech, South San Francisco planners saw the investment as an opportunity to jump-start a larger development by including an adjoining 50 acres of under-used city-owned property, some of it leased to Southern California real estate investment firm King Ventures. The Shorenstein/SKS group has since negotiated an option to buy out King Ventures’ lease for $7.5 million, according to public records. Shorenstein and SKS have agreed to make $17.8 million in infrastructure and public improvements and pay the city $4.5 million.

At a ground breaking Oct. 19 for the ferry terminal, Shorenstein and SKS executives looked on as U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier (D.-San Mateo) and other San Mateo officials celebrated the start of construction. Todd Sklar, Shorenstein’s director of development, said the ferry was an important part of what drew them to the property. “The defining characteristic is the waterfront location and the views. We are trying to find a way to take most advantage of it,” he said.

Dan Kingsley, a managing partner with SKS, said the entitlement process has been surprisingly pleasant.

“It’s a very refreshing experience down here,” said Kingsley. “People are responsive, they tell you exactly what is on their mind, and the political issues are outlined up front.”

Sklar said the buildings would be build to a minimum of Gold certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design system and the project offered a chance to “maybe do things a little better than has been done before in South San Francisco.”

“The opportunity to plan such a large parcel and orchestrate open space, transportation and sustainability in a comprehensive way is a unique opportunity for both the city and us,” said Sklar.

San Mateo County Harbor District General Manager Peter Grenell said the ferry would help relieve traffic for a future generation of South San Francisco biotech workers. When fully built out, the campus could house some 8,000 workers.

South San Francisco, like the rest of the Bay Area, is currently suffering from higher than usual office vacancy. The submarket is looking at a vacancy rate of 19.7 percent with another 7.2 percent of sublease space available. Some 800,000 square feet of space is available.

“I think we are looking at a blip in the market,” said Van Duyn. “Shorenstein would not be as invested as they are out here unless they thought there was a future out here.”

jkdineen@bizjournals.com / (415) 288-4971

Source: http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/...26/story3.html

[San Frangelino]

Here is something I found while aimlessly surfing the net.

MILPITAS SQUARE
Barber Lane at Bellew
Mixed use
900 dwelling units in multiple buildings
175, 000 sq. ft. commercial
click here for bigger image and more info:http://www.vmwp.com/projects/milpitas-midrise.php



Nearby:
LANDMARK TOWERS
600 Barber Lane
18 story tower Mixed use
375 dwelling units
Retail - 3 floors 100,465 sq.ft.
Office - 1 floor
36,530 sq.ft.
http://www.ci.milpitas.ca.gov/govern...esidential.asp

[pesto]

I just had lunch there today (at a very good Vegan place named Loving Hut). For those not familiar with the place, it is a true cross between a strip mall and a bustling DT area. It is a large broad “U” of buildings with outdoor sidewalks and a huge parking lot in the center. There are roughly 50 Asian restaurants and maybe 30 other shops around the U. At lunch M-F and most of the day on weekends, it is absolutely packed with workers, families and whoever. Parking is unavailable for blocks and pedestrian traffic on the walkways is as dense as lower NY. Amazing for a strip-mall.

What it looks like they are proposing is another Rivermark (just down the road in Santa Clara). This strikes me as about a break-even. It’s in the middle of a low-rise, low-density office area, with wide empty avenues and freeways. They plan to put up higher density housing and less retail, but there is still no way to get anywhere without a car.

My first thought is that it creates a “place” but it is a crowded, gate-controlled place with parking difficult to find and no mass transit that goes to anywhere you would want to go to. A little island not connected to anything. But it does create some housing in an area where housing is either old or non-existant.

[San Frangelino]

Even in this economy, it seems redeveloping shopping centers is all the rage in the South Bay
via:http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjo...09/story2.html

Friday, November 6, 2009
San Antonio Shopping Center in Mountain View gets multi-use revamp
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal - by Katherine Conrad

New ownership at the aging San Antonio Shopping Center offers the city a long-awaited opportunity to bring a retail relic into the 21st century.

Developer Merlone Geier Partners of San Francisco plans to redevelop the aging 16-acre site at the corner of San Antonio Road and El Camino Real that has been home to a Sears store for five decades. The dated building, surrounded by a massive parking lot, would be developed as a mixed-use, multistory project of 300 to 400 apartments and 430,000 square feet of new retail, restaurant and office space.


Greg Geertsen, project manager for Merlone Geier, would not disclose the price he is paying Thoits Brothers for the parcel, but he said his company plans to spend $160 million developing the project. The frozen credit markets are not a deterrent, he said, because, “We don’t finance anything. We are cash developers.”

Construction on the multimillion-dollar project is expected to start in July or August and take from 12 to 18 months to complete. Geertsen said the project should generate 700 construction jobs and 800 permanent jobs. Plans are already winding their way through Mountain View’s planning department as the developer waits to close escrow on the site.

Here is a VIRTUAL TOUR: http://www.SanAntoniocenterproject.com/tour.html

[Gordo]

^Interesting virtual tour. I assumed by the article that they were talking about housing over retail, but it looks like it's five to six story housing on one end and retail on the other. Looks like mostly underground parking, which surprises me.

That shopping center has been in need of a major makeover for a loooong time.

[San Frangelino]

Brisbane Baylands Info

Discovered a website dedicated to the revitalization of the brisbane baylands. Not much on it except a video showing some images of the proposed developments.

http://brisbanebaylands.com/

For a visual reference, here is an image i picked off from http://brisbaneca.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html

[peanut gallery]

Originally Posted by San Frangelino

Even in this economy, it seems redeveloping shopping centers is all the rage in the South Bay

Not just the South Bay -- Northgate Mall in Terra Linda (San Rafael) is nearing completion on a massive overhaul of the place. They've been working on it for over a year.

I was looking at Google maps to check out those Milpitas proposals and was floored by the amount of parking lot that exists between Tasman and 237 to the west of 880. The traffic in that area must be insane around 5:00pm.

[San Frangelino]

from:http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/green...-69780457.html

Berkeley Too Good for Green
Tom Bates's plans to develop West Berkeley into a cleantech research hub opposed by aging hippies
By JACKSON WEST
Updated 12:30 PM PST, Wed, Nov 11, 2009

Putting the "Berzerkeley" in Berkeley, neighborhood activists turned out in force to "protect" West Berkeley from green technology jobs and housing at a Planning Commission meeting last week.
The East Bay Express put it succinctly: "Fifty years from now, after the polar ice caps melt and West Berkeley is under water, people might look back on 2009 and say, 'What the hell were they thinking?'"
Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates has proposed easing zoning restrictions on high-rise residential development and commercial space for research and development of clean energy technology in the neighborhood that stretches from San Pablo Avenue to the Berkeley waterfront.
Yet baby boomers in the neighborhood turned out in force to shout down the proposal, arguing that the plan would gentrify the neighborhood and thereby increase rents.
Over the last two generations, the once-industrial neighborhood, like many in the area, has been hollowed out by the departure of manufacturing businesses and jobs.
The West Berkeley Artisans and Inudstrial Companies organization, led by activist Rick Auerbach, says that area residents and business can't compete with federally funded research spinoffs from the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that are flush with stimulus money.
However, the chorus of boos may fall on deaf ears among city planners, who are likely to recommend Bates's plan to the City Council.

[pesto]

Peanut Gallery: yeah, that was sort of my point. The only good news re traffic is that a lot of the buildings are still not at capacity. But traffic is bad most of the time, even with the 880 widening largely complete.

I suppose that ideally you would put up housing nearer to the Great Mall and the housing already around it. Then you are creating the beginning of some density. Otherwise, it's just kind of another "suburban industrial park" with a "suburban" residential tower way over across the parking lots.

[mahanakorn]

Originally Posted by San Frangelino

Here is a VIRTUAL TOUR: http://www.SanAntoniocenterproject.com/tour.html

I can't quite get oriented: As the video opens and closes, are we looking up San Antonio toward CalTrain? If so, that would put the mid-rise housing close to CalTrain. But would the housing be on the CalTrain side of California or the El Camino side of California?

Thanks in advance for your insights.

[San Frangelino]

This should help you get oriented. The mid-rise towers should be placed at point 27, closer to The CalTrain Station, away from El Camino Real,but not quite up to California Drive.

[Gordo]

^It'll be interesting to see if they attempt to redevelop the rest of the center if the first portion sells well. That Walmart building is pretty old and undersized as well (even for a traditional Walmart, let alone a supercenter). This whole site is what, probably about a 7-10 minute walk to San Antonio Caltrain? The Target building across Showers is pretty old and decrepit too, though I think that's owned by someone else.

[peanut gallery]

^I was wondering about that too. Is this phase 1, then they'll redevelop the rest, or...? I haven't been in that area in quite awhile, so I may be way off. But I vaguely recall that these are actually two separate shopping centers that are built right into each other. Is that right, or am I "mis-remembering?"

Originally Posted by pesto

Otherwise, it's just kind of another "suburban industrial park" with a "suburban" residential tower way over across the parking lots.

Excellent description of the area. You described it well the first time too. I was just a little shocked at how much parking is in that corner.

[San Frangelino]

This story bums me out. I was looking forward to seeing how this structure would turn out.

UC Berkeley must scale back on downtown museum
Kenneth Baker, Chronicle Art Critic
Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Read Here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MN721AM4LA.DTL

[yakumoto]

Pretty major development, and thankfully built on the VTA light rail line.

Yahoo Santa Clara campus could house 12,000 workers

By Mike Swift

mswift@mercurynews.com
Posted: 11/24/2009 10:13:55 PM PST
Updated: 11/30/2009 12:35:36 PM PST



Despite a rocky three years, Yahoo is moving forward with plans to build a new campus that would house as many as 12,000 workers in Santa Clara, potentially the largest single real estate development in the city's history.

The total complex would include about 3 million square feet of office space, featuring 13 six-story buildings constructed over a large underground parking garage, according to a draft Environmental Impact Report released this week for public review.

"It's enough to make you yell, Yahoo!" said Santa Clara Vice Mayor Jamie Matthews. "To have such a massive future expansion in your city's future is a tremendous gift to all of Silicon Valley."

The Internet company on Tuesday declined to disclose the cost of the proposed 48-acre campus. Yahoo is going ahead with the plans, despite losing ground to Google and Microsoft in Internet search and this year cutting about 2,000 jobs. Final completion is years off and Yahoo could still scale back the project.

Yahoo's total work force is about 13,200, but a company spokeswoman would not say whether the world's largest e-mail provider plans to relocate its current corporate headquarters from Sunnyvale.

"At this point, it's too early to speculate on that," said the spokeswoman, Dana Lengkeek. "We're going through this development process, and we can't really say at this point we're going to do X, Y, or Z because that might impact the approval process."

However, according to the draft report, a key purpose of the project is to "consolidate Yahoo's existing leased office/R&D space and provide a campus in the City of Santa Clara, to meet future growth needs."

Officials in both Santa Clara and Sunnyvale said Yahoo has not notified them of any plans to move its headquarters.

"We're trying to be sensitive to that issue," said Matthews, the Santa Clara vice mayor.

"Yahoo has been a valued resident of our community, said John Pilger, a spokesman for Sunnyvale. "We certainly think it's important for them to be here, and we hope they would stay."

Yahoo's development plans, he added, don't "necessarily mean a headquarters is going to move. Moving a headquarters is a major undertaking; it's not just a matter of moving desks over there."

The Santa Clara site, which Yahoo purchased in 2006, is currently occupied by a cluster of mostly vacant office buildings, a short distance from the Santa Clara Convention Center and the site of a proposed stadium for the San Francisco 49ers. Yahoo declined to disclose the purchase price, which was withheld from public records.

But an analysis of county assessment records, which are based on the most recent sale data, suggest
the price was about $118 million.

The new campus would be built in a series of phases, with demolition starting within one year of approval by the city, according to the draft EIR. A public hearing on the project is tentatively scheduled Feb. 3, the public has until Jan. 6 to submit comments to the city on the plan.

Kevin Riley, Santa Clara's planning director, said he believes the Yahoo project would be the largest single real estate development in the city's history.

Although the new campus would be located near the VTA's Old Ironsides Light Rail stop, the EIR details plans for 9,900 parking spaces and says the campus would generate about 13,000 daily vehicle trips, even with the transit connection.

"The issue is traffic," Riley said of the project. Even though Yahoo will most likely encourage transit and bike use, "there are a lot of employees on a campus of that size, so there will be a lot of cars associated with the project."

One rationale for Yahoo to move to Santa Clara, where it already has some office space, would be the significant savings the company would realize buying power from the city's nonprofit municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power.

A fully built-out campus in Santa Clara would save Yahoo more than $1 million a year on electricity, said Larry Owens, manager of customer services for Silicon Valley Power. The city utility has the lowest systemwide average electricity cost in California, Owens said, and would offer a large commercial customer such as Yahoo savings of 25 percent to 30 percent over PG&E.

As the headquarters of Intel, and the home of many offices of other large tech companies, Santa Clara already has about 1.8 jobs for each of the city's approximately 117,000 residents. A Yahoo relocation would increase that imbalance, adding traffic and housing pressures, but Riley said there would also be economic pluses for the city.

"Typically in the economics of land use, business is a revenue generator and housing translates into service costs for a city," Riley said.

To provide some context for the size of Yahoo's plans, Mountain View-based Google has only about 3 million square feet of office space in the Bay Area — the same amount Yahoo is planning for Santa Clara.

Under new CEO Carol Bartz, Yahoo reported a brighter economic outlook in its third quarter results last month, with a tripling of its profit amid signs its Internet advertising business is stabilizing.

Most of the jump was due to cost-cutting, but Bartz told analysts more recently that Yahoo plans to boost its operating profit margin to a range of 15 percent to 20 percent by 2012, up from just 6 percent this year.

Yahoo is also finalizing the terms of what it says will be a lucrative search partnership with Microsoft, a deal awaiting approval from regulators.

[peanut gallery]

At six stories, these would probably be pretty easy to see from the new Niners stadium. Yahoo might get some free visibility if both projects come together.

[pesto]

Are we talking "Yahoo Stadium at Santa Clara; Home of the San Francisco 49ers"? A lot to put on a digital sign. Maybe the phrases alternate.

Is this the old 3Com site or next to it? I don't know that you will be able to see 6 story buildings across Great America but maybe.

Sounds a bit like a negotiating ploy to get some tax breaks from Sunnyvale.