San Jose Approves Bay West's 2M SF Office Campus
Seven eight-story buildings will rise on site of former electronics store.
The San Jose Planning Commission has approved Bay West Development’s plan for a seven-building, 1.9M SF office campus on a 19.7-acre site in the city.
The office campus will come with two parking structures encompassing 1.6M SF and accommodating more than 5,300 vehicles.
The cluster of eight-story office buildings, located at 550 East Brokaw Road in San Jose, will be built on a site occupied by a 214K SF building that used to be the home of Fry’s Electronics and an existing parking structure, both of which will be demolished to make way for the campus.
While plans for the development include two large open spaces, “paved office patios and miniature plazas,” the developers also said they need to chop down 274 trees to make way for the project.
Campbell-based Bay West also is in the midst of developing Bascom Station, a mixed-use, transit-oriented project that is rising on a 7-acre parcel adjacent to the Bascom VTA Light Rail Station within an Urban Village Plan in San Jose.
Bay West acquired the property in 2019, and in September of that year obtained full entitlements from the City Council as a Signature Project encompassing 590 apartment units and 230K SF of office space as well as a 1-acre public park and plaza connecting to the light rail station platform.
According to CBRE’s Q4 office market report, Silicon Valley ended the fourth quarter with an office vacancy rate of 14.1%, negative net absorption of minus 311K SF and an average rental rate of $5.65 per SF full service gross on a monthly basis.
Sublease availability in Silicon Valley totaled more than 4M SF in the fourth quarter, with nearly three-quarters of the total coming from two markets, Santa Clara (1.4M) and Sunnyvale 748K SF.
A two-building Silicon Valley office campus went back on the market in the wake of Meta’s termination of a 457K SF lease on the campus. In October, WeWork listed a pair of adjacent six-story office buildings at 391 and 401 San Antonio Road in Mountain View.
LinkedIn was the original tenant of the office campus, developed by Merlone Grier Partners. After Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016, the lease on the campus—running until 2029–traded to flex office pioneer WeWork, which then leased the complex to the company formerly known as Facebook.
The Mountain View office campus is owned by Brookfield Properties. Meta exercised its opt-out clause earlier this year and vacated the 218K SF building at 401 San Antonio in the second quarter, and then left its larger twin in the third quarter.