Madison Capital Acquires Fremont Campus for $260M

Hard-drive maker Seagate Technology has sold a 576,000-square-foot advanced manufacturing facility in Fremont, CA to Madison Capital Group for $260 million in a sale-leaseback transaction.

The Fremont plant originally was the site of a controversial solar-panel manufacturing facility that received the largest single federal “stimulus” grant in the 2009 recovery act during the Great Recession.

Solyndra received a $535-million grant to build the $300-million plant, which opened in 2010. Less than a year later, the company filed for bankruptcy, citing subsidized solar panels from China as the primary reason for its failure to launch.

Seagate bought facility for about $90 million in 2013 and invested $200 million to redevelop the plant into an advanced manufacturing facility.

The 30-acre campus at 47488 Kato Rd. includes a two-story and mezzanine building that includes more than 100,000 square feet of cleanroom and laboratory build-out, a two-level office space component, an on-site lounge, heavy power and MEP infrastructure. The property campus includes 20 dock roll-up doors and 10 undeveloped acres for potential expansion.

Seagate remains the sole tenant as part of the sale-leaseback transaction, according to the San Francisco Business Times.

Madison Capital, which owns $3.2B in assets under management, last year partnered with Meadow Partners to purchase the historic Ford Point building in nearby Richmond. The partners bought the landmark office complex on the shores of San Francisco Bay from Emeryville, CA-based Orton Development for $103.7M.

The 517K SF tech and creative office campus is located on the site of a former Ford Motor Co. assembly plant.

In addition to the offices, the property included the Rosie the Riveter museum and a restaurant, The Craneway Pavilion. According to the Richmond Standard newspaper, Orton retained ownership of the restaurant and the museum—which honors the women who worked at the plant during WWII, when it produced tanks for the US Army—and continues to operate on the site.

The Ford Point property, listed on the National Registry of Historic Places since 1988, was the East Bay site of a 26.5-acre Ford Motor assembly plant that produced cars until 1955.

Orton bought the shuttered complex in 2004 from the city of Richmond. The company spent $51M to redevelop the old auto plant, which needed to be retrofitted to comply with new structural requirements that were enacted after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake in the Bay Area.

The 1989 earthquake famously disrupted a World Series game between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics, the only time the two Bay Area teams have faced each other in baseball’s Fall Classic.

The plant’s adaptive reuse project won the American Institute of Architects National Honor Award in 2011. The design for the historic waterfront property at 1414 Harbour Way S. includes a unique “saw tooth” roof of jagged solar panel installations. The redevelopment also added electric charging stations.