Rubicon Point Partners Buys Oakland’s Rotunda Building
Rubicon will revitalize the 300,000-square-foot office building that is known as the Crown Jewel of Oakland.
Rubicon Point Partners has acquired the Rotunda Building in Oakland from Rotunda Partners II. The 300,000-square-foot office building is know as the Crown Jewel of Oakland and one of the best examples of Beaux-Arts architecture. Rubicon plans to revitalize the property and implement a sustainability plan to reduce the property’s carbon footprint.
As part of the revitalization, Rubicon will launch a work-from-here program with amenities that are not available in a home-office environment. The amenities include a fitness center, common areas and collaboration infrastructure to accommodate a hybrid workforce. “We look forward to implementing an improvement plan that will honor its history but also modernize it to allow for a new generation of companies to thrive,” said Ani Vartanian, Rubicon’s co-managing partner in a statement about the firm’s revitalization plans.
In reducing the building’s carbon footprint, Rubicon hopes this revitalization will serve as a model for other historic properties in the area. The plan involves an upgrade to the building systems and the deployment of Rubicon’s technology stack, which includes machine learning utility management systems.
The Oakland office market has outperformed neighboring San Francisco in the last 12 months. According to research from Marcus & Millichap, a limited new construction pipeline is also helping fuel a stronger office market. New construction was down by about 55,000 square feet last year with no new product delivering in the fourth quarter. This year, new deliveries are mostly build-to-suits or speculative projects that have already secured leasing commitments.
Despite the limited construction, however, the vacancy rate still stands at 16.1%, largely due to class-A move outs during the pandemic that drove a 210 basis point increase in vacancy during the pandemic. As a result, rents are down 3.6% to 37.68 per square foot this year. This is largely due to class-A space, which is competing with falling prices throughout the Bay Area, creating a steeper discount for space in that category.