Commercial Real Estate Blog

The Contra Costa times featured an article today highlighting the relatively inexpensive rents in Fremont as spurring demand for space. While Silicon Valley and the Peninsula have seen office rates increase over the past two years or so, Fremont has remained a fairly inexpensive market. Rents have moved up in Fremont, but compared to space just over the Dumbarton Bridge or over Highway 92, Fremont is a bargain.

Fremont is a market which doesn’t have a lot of the Class A type of office space that you can find in Foster City or Redwood Shores, but it does have a few comparable buildings in its downtown area nearby the BART Station. Space in Fremont runs about $2.50 Full-Service for Class A office, while in Foster City or Redwood Shores would run you north of $4.00 Full-Service.

Supply is much higher in Fremont with vacancy rates for CTU construction offices and R&D facilities into the teens and rents 30-50% cheaper than the alternatives on the other side of the bay. Some of the new companies to move into Fremont recently include Solyndra, Super Micro Computer, and PurFresh. Also, the stock of single-story R&D buildings in Fremont is also making it a popular place for cleantech companies looking for a cheaper alternative to space along the 237 corridor in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose.

Lew Wolff and the Oakland Athletics have formally submitted plans for the new “Cisco Field” ballpark project in Fremont. The project encompasses 226 acres of land off Auto Mall Parkway and is slated to include roughly 3,000 housing units, an elementary school, 500,000 square feet of retail, and a 32,000 seat ballpark.

The estimated cost of the project is $1.8 Billion.  While plans have been submitted, the next step is for an EIR (environmental impact report) to be compiled which could take more than a year. While it is anticipated that parking, access, and traffic congestion will be a major concern for the citizenry, the scale of this project and the sales and property tax it would generate is likely too attractive for the city to turn down.

This project in the interim will likely do nothing but give a boost to prices of nearby property as many are likely to point to the revitilization and redevelopment which took place around the Giants ballpark after it was developed.