Commercial Real Estate Blog

Oracle has put up its tower at 488 Almaden Blvd. on the market for sale. BEA paid about $335 per square foot for the building last year in hopes of moving workers from its north first street campus over but instead Oracle has decided to turn around and put the vacant building back on the market.

The 388,000 SF Class A building is located on Almaden Blvd. in Downtown San Jose. Built by Sobrato Development about 7-8 years ago at a cost of nearly $100M the property is on the market unpriced, though it is very likely that it will trade for below its replacement cost. The building was previous to BEA in play with NVIDIA, but that deal fell apart partly due to the economic incentive package not being sweet enough, and likely because the move from Santa Clara to Downtown would have represented a relatively cumbersome move from a logistics and personnel standpoint. NVIDIA instead acquired San Tomas Commerce Park across the street from its existing campus and intends on building a 2M square feet campus.

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Sold, not sold, sold, not sold. Such went the story of The Mitchell Block in San Jose for years. It appears though this time, “sold” just might stick. The Mitchell Block, a 3.6 Acre parcel bound between Santa Clara and St. John streets between First and Market in downtown San Jose has finally sold to the VTA for a reported price tag of about $40M.

Several years ago, the Palladium Group out of New York was reported to have been in negotiations and/or contract to purchase the parcel to convert into a several hundred million dollar entertainment and housing project. The fallout of the local market during the early part of the decade killed that deal.

The VTA intends to use the parcel as a staging area for its construction activities for the next few years. Their are plans on the books for a Bart extension into San Jose but those are at best several years off leaving the parcel to continue in its underutilized state.