No Timeline for New 3M-SF Yahoo Campus

SANTA CLARA, CA-Yahoo Inc. told GlobeSt.com on Friday that it’s too early to talk about a development timeline for its planned new 46-acre campus, which would include 3 million square feet in 13 buildings. The company acquired the assemblage here back in 2006 from San Francisco-based TMG Partners and has been in the entitlement process for the past year.

Yahoo currently owns and leases approximately 1.8 million square feet in Sunnyvale, where it is headquartered, and leases an additional 419,000 square feet on Great America parkway in Santa Clara. Yahoo filed an application for entitlements for the new campus development in nearby Santa Clara a little more than a year ago. The city’s planning department is now reviewing the draft environmental impact statement, which will soon be distributed for public comment. That would put the project on track to receive final approval from the City Council sometime in the first half of 2010.

2811-2821 Mission College

While project approval could come in the near-term there are apparently no near-term development plans. A Yahoo spokesperson tells GlobeSt.com there is no timeline for development or firm plans for how the campus would be utilized. While Yahoo isn’t providing any cost estimates either such an undertaking would easily top $1 billion, according to local development sources.

The property is located between Old Ironsides Drive and Patrick Henry Drive off of Tasman Boulevard, next to a light rail station. TMG assembled the contiguous acreage in multiple transactions beginning in 2001. The bulk of the property is a 40-acre former Siemens campus that holds 600,000 sf of single-story R&D-type buildings. The buildings are “mostly vacant” and house no Yahoo employees, according to the spokesperson.

Yahoo! reportedly evaluated over 50 Bay Area sites from San Francisco to San Jose. One of the key factors in its search was proximity to its headquarters in Sunnyvale.