Commercial Real Estate Blog

Word is a buyer has been picked by Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL). BEA paid about about $335 psf ($130M) in 2007 for the 388,000 square foot tower. You can read more about the story of the tower in a previous post. If I had to guess, I’d say the building will trade for significantly less than what BEA paid for it. It’s going to take a serious piece of equity to buy this vacant building and tenant it up.

I’m going to make a prediction here and say that the buyer is going to pay around $260-270 psf ($100-$104M) for the tower. And since we’re making predictions, I’ll predict the buyer is either (in this order): Legacy Partners, Boston Properties, or Tishman Speyer.

Anybody else want to make a prediction?

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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KT Properties has acquired the property locatd at 1 South Market St in Downtown San Jose from Haury Properties. Plans for the site include high-rise condominiums but could be changed to office if the demand materializes. KT and its partners are currently developing the AXIS residential condo project located at Santa Clara and N Almaden Boulevard.

Haury originally had been holding the site for office development but later changed those plans into residential as the office market cooled.

The city seems to prefer that the 1 S Market site go office but it doesn’t make any sense at current rents Downtonw. Legacy is in the process of building the second tower at RiverPark on W San Carlos, and the BEA building is up in the air now that Oracle is acquiring them. In addition, Boston Properties and Barry Swenson control land downtown at a lower cost basis which could go office.

The newly named Legacy Hamilton Plaza, formerly just Hamilton Plaza is a two-building project near the intersection of Hamilton Avenue and Bascom Avenue in Campbell, California. Legacy acquired the project from the Ohio State Teachers Retirement System.

The two, six-story buildings located at 900-910 E Hamilton Avenue combine for a total of 355,000 square feet and include subterranean parking. The project is currently 80% leased. The projects leasing was previously was handled by Cornish and Carey but Legacy has made the switch to CPS.

The project benefits from easy freeway access and its vicinity to The Pruneyard Shopping Center. Legacy will undoubtedly be raising asking rents to the building.