Pat Cashman, director of the county's Surplus Property Authority, tells GlobeSt.com that three of the four parcels that make up the 35.7 acres are immediately adjacent to 27 acres that is already owned by Blake Hunt Ventures and slated for a 300,000-sf, Whole Foods-anchored lifestyle center called the Green on Park Place. Both chunks of property are bounded on the south by Interstate 580, on the north by Dublin Boulevard, on the east by Hacienda Drive and on the west by Iron Horse Parkway.
Cashman says Blake Hunt's interest in the county's property was "an outgrowth of their progress on the other site for which they have come up with other retailers and other uses that couldn't be included in the initial 27 acres." When asked about the "office campus" zoning on the county's land and the likelihood of a zone change that would support a master-planned mixed-use project, Cashman says "we don't go into a situation like this without discussions with city, and the city seems to be very responsive to this approach to the site."
Jeri Ram, Dublin's director of community development, tells GlobeSt.com that the city is indeed interested. The city council has not yet addressed the specific proposal, "but city staff thinks it's workable," she says, because the proposal calls for "mostly office campus with some retail and some housing" as opposed to something that would have no office component at all.
The purchase and sale agreement requires Blake Hunt and Stockbridge to pay $1 million at the time the agreement is executed, with additional deposits of $943,375 every three months until the close of escrow, anticipated in two to four years. All payments will be used toward the purchase price. Blake Hunt has until Sept. 8 to back out of the deal and get its initial payments back. After that date, all deposits become non-refundable.
Last year, Blake Hunt Ventures sold the office and retail pieces of a similarly mixed-use development, Park Place Bay Meadows in San Mateo, for $152 million. The office and retail components include 200,000 sf of office, a 40,000-sf Whole Foods grocery store and a 20,000-sf Gold's Gym. The rest of the development includes 19 luxury condominiums, a 1.2-acre public park and a temporary home for the San Mateo Library.
The land sale represents most of the remainder of some 800 acres of contiguous former military land that Alameda County has sold off to developers over the past decade in 30 transactions, Cashman says. The 800 acres will hold approximately 5,000 residential units and four to five million sf of commercial. To date, 2.5 million sf of commercial space and 3,500 residential units have been constructed on the land, he says.
Only 11 acres remain to be sold. "It is a great office site," he says. "But the moment is not right for office, so we will hold it."
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