Commercial Real Estate Blog

Palo Alto has announced that any commercial construction greater than 25,000 square feet will require Green Building Council verification. That move makes it the first south bay city to codify green building. While many new projects coming out of the ground today seek LEED certification, the fact is that ultimately the increased expense of LEED building, at least for the first few years, will be something which will affect the land costs a developer can afford to build. Ultimately, it is the tenants which much demand LEED buildings, otherwise the only difference to a developer is that they are delivering a building at a higher cost. If tenant’s do not demand LEED space and are prepared to pay for it, then mandating LEED does nothing more than reduce the land cost a developer can pay.

The mandate however is not something that will bring commercial construction to a halt. It will simply take a few years to work out as ultimately the tenant demand for LEED space will materialize one way or another; whether voluntary or driven by market forces. Until then, developers will continue to build but it will just take more to make a deal to pencil.

The San Francisco Business Times is reporting that Sequoia Capital has signed up for the top floor of Tishman Speyer’s new tower at 555 Mission Street in San Francisco. The 33-Story, 550,000 SF tower is being built by Turner Construction and is currently seeking LEED certification. It was designed by architecture firms Kohn Pederson Fox and Heller Manus.

Sequoia Capital’s deal for the top floor is reported to be coming in around $80 psf. The firm is a renowned VC with a stellar track record, including investments in YouTube, Google, 3Com, Cisco, and a long list of other successes.

Sequoia is currently headquartered at 3000 Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park and occupies building 4 along with other VC’s Menlo Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and 5AM Ventures. It’s unclear whether it is ditching Sand Hill, where rents have shot up to north of $120 psf range (and in one case to $180 psf) , or is setting up a San Francisco office in the face of the resurging internet/web 2.0 scene in San Francisco. The top floor is 15,000 SF, which generally is a big chunk for an expansion/satellite office, let alone most venture capital firms altogether. Another possiblity is that to get the top floor they needed to take down the entire floor, and will elect to sublease a portion of it.

At the end of the day, chances are pretty skinny that they’re ditching Sand Hill Road.

Verisign, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRSN) is in contract to sell approximately half of its 290,000 SF headquarters in Mountain View, California. They are under contract to sell 675 and 685 East Middlefield Road for approximately $49M ($308 psf). The two buildings constitute about 159,000 SF, which is a bit more than half of the entire headquarters of 290,000 SF.

Verisign purchased the building in October of 2001 from Sobrato for about $120M in 2001 ($750 psf). A copy of the original PSA is available here. They purchased the building to get out of a 10-year lease agreement they signed in October of 2000. That lease agreement had a start rate of $7.50 NNN (per month). A copy of the original lease agreement is available here.

As part of the deal, the buyer which is PR III Middlefield Road, LLC, will lease back the facility to Verisign for a period of 2.5 years, with an option to extend for an additional five. The lease will start at approximately $2.50 NNN.

The project is across the street from Dostart Development’s 690 Middlefield Road project, which is a 340,000 SF Leed Silver Class A project going up on 15.6 acres it acquired from Hewlett Packard last year for about $60 psf (land cost). That project is being marketed at $3.65 NNN with a $35 allowance over a warm shell.

Both buildings benefit from a light rail station within the immediate walking area, though Verisign’s building will require fairly significant improvements to get them to Class A status.

The San Francisco Building Inspections Commission voted in favor on enacting new green building requirements. The requirements would require almost all commercial buildings (those bigger than 5,000 square feet) to comply with LEED standards. In addition, residential structures exceeding 75 feet in height and other buildings in excess of 25,000 square feet must also comply with LEED standards.

The new guidelines will need to be signed into law by the Mayor, but he has indicated that if they are passed by the Board he would do so. It should be noted that the new building requirements would not be fully implemented until 2012.

These requirements will likely become codified in more and more cities over the next several years.