7 of The Biggest Bay Area Stories in 2015
We chose a few highlights that stood out from the crowd.
In April, Hudson Pacific Properties closed on the $3.5B purchase of Equity Office Properties' 8.2M SF Bay Area office portfolio from Blackstone's real estate funds—a deal that immediately doubled Hudson Pacific's size. The portfolio included 26 office assets and two development parcels in San Francisco, Redwood Shores, Palo Alto, Silicon Valley and the San Jose airport. Hudson Pacific now owns and operates 33 office properties in the Bay Area, including Skyport Plaza in San Jose (shown).
Uber made a big move in Oakland's booming market this year with its $123.5M purchase of the Sears Building, now called Uptown Station. The building, located near transit, will house the carsharing company's Bay Area headquarters.
In May, Stripe signed the largest market lease in San Francisco during 2015, with the tech company taking all 300k SF under development by Alexandria Real Estate Equities at 510 Townsend St. The building is expected to open in 2017.
One Rincon Hill Tower 2 at 400 Harrison St sold for $410M, or $1.4M/unit for the 299-unit high-rise. Rockpoint Group and Maximus Real Estate Partners bought the property from Principal Real Estate Investors at what marked the highest per-unit price for a Bay Area apartment building since 2007.
Apple, which started buying up property in North San Jose earlier in the year, began to explore the possibility of creating a campus that could reach 4.15M SF, drawing even more interest to the area. Apple owns 28 acres purchased in the summer for $165.8M (which includes the 101 Tech campus, shown) and it later bought 43 acres for $138M.
Shorenstein Properties sold its two-building Market Square development at 1355 Market St to JP Morgan Asset Management in a recapitalization deal valued between $900M and $990M that leaves Shorenstein with a 2% stake in the property. The 1.1M SF office and retail complex houses Twitter's headquarters.
The Golden State Warriors closed on the purchase of the 12-acre Mission Bay site from Salesforce.com in October. The basketball team, which has spent the past 43 years in Oakland, plans to build its new, privately financed, 18,064-seat arena in time for the 2018-2019 season. The entire project, including 580k SF of office and lab space, retail and restaurant space and public plazas, is expected to cost more than $1B. Though the project has had opposition from the Mission Bay Alliance, it has received approval of a key environmental impact report and a transportation plan that seeks to mitigate traffic concerns.
