Sares Regis Breaks Ground On Tech Company's New Sunnyvale HQ
Count one of Silicon Valley's most enduring companies as the latest to get in on Sunnyvale's office boom, with the help of a prolific Bay Area developer.
On Friday, Sares Regis Group of Northern California broke ground on the Sunnyvale headquarters expansion of Fortinet, a $15B cybersecurity company that has been based in Sunnyvale since it was founded in 2000.
The ground-up building at the corner of Kifer Road and Commercial Street in Sunnyvale will be 172K SF, adding to Fortinet's currently 162K SF headquarters on Kifer Road.
By utilizing a precast concrete structural system manufactured off-site, SRGNC expects a shortened construction timeline, allowing Fortinet to occupy its new headquarters sooner than conventional on-site methods would allow, Sares Regis Commercial Division President Jeff Birdwell said.
"The goal is [to save] four to six months," Birdwell said. "Our goal is cost parity to conventional methodologies, but if you measure the time value I suspect there could be savings."
Leading the precast concrete manufacturing is Woodland-based subcontractor Clark Pacific, which reportedly did the same both for Apple's $3.6B Cupertino campus and its 1.8M SF parking structures. DPR Construction is the general contractor for the project, and Heller Manus Architects is the lead architect.
The precast concrete components will afford Fortinet both resiliency and environmental benefits in addition to speed, which was Fortinet's preference to occupy its new headquarters as soon as possible, Birdwell said. Off-site manufacturing allows the development team to include radiant cooling for the building in the factory in a much more efficient process than radiant cooling through traditional on-site construction, Birdwell said.
Fortinet's expansion comes amid a wave of office activity in a quickly saturating Sunnyvale market. Google has spent $1.4B buying property in north Sunnyvale alone over the last two years, The Mercury News has reported. The city's Peery Park has over 2.2M SF of office space in its pipeline.
Fortinet has been growing alongside its hometown. The company, which provides network security appliances like firewalls, saw a 20% jump in revenue in 2018, according to Yahoo Finance.
The cybersecurity company's building is one of several Silicon Valley headquarters on which SRGNC has led development. The San Mateo-based developer is leading Adobe's HQ expansion in downtown San Jose, which is part of about $8B and 8M SF worth of projects between San Francisco and San Jose in the company's pipeline.
Fortinet's project should wrap up in 2020, Birdwell said.
"As one of the top cybersecurity companies in the world, Fortinet contributes to jobs and growth in Sunnyvale and the surrounding community," Sunnyvale Mayor Larry Klein said at the groundbreaking ceremony.
CORRECTION, JULY 24, 11:21 A.M. PT: Clark Pacific has reportedly worked on both the Apple campus and its parking garages. The story has been updated to reflect its involvement in both.
