Platform 16 tech campus in downtown San Jose will break ground in March

SAN JOSE — A huge new tech campus in downtown San Jose is poised for a March groundbreaking, fresh evidence that a decade-long drought for major office projects in the urban heart of the Bay Area’s largest city has vanished.

Platform 16, being developed by Boston Properties as a huge job hub for tech companies, would total 1.1 million square feet and deliver three big office buildings near the banks of the Guadalupe River.

The formal groundbreaking for Platform 16 is scheduled for March 4, according to an invitation that Boston Properties has begun to circulate. Boston Properties, one of the nation’s largest and most successful developers, earned $511 million on revenue of $2.95 billion during 2019, according to the Yahoo Finance site.

“Boston Properties has deep roots in the Bay Area,” said Scott Knies, executive director of the San Jose Downtown Association. “Their Platform 16 project will anchor the northwest corner of downtown and bring thousands of new jobs to San Jose.”

The Platform 16 project is bounded by Autumn Parkway, West Julian Street, North Autumn Street, and a railroad line, and is just south of a Target store that’s part of the bustling San Jose Market Center.

The development also is on the edge of neighborhoods where Google has collected numerous properties for a transit-oriented development called Downtown West that would rise near the Diridon train station and SAP Center.

As the Platform 16 groundbreaking nears, Boston Properties has bought out its two partners in the project, according to Santa Clara County public documents filed on Feb. 20.

“It’s a great sign that Boston Properties bought out their partners,” said Bob Staedler, principal executive with Silicon Valley Synergy, a land-use consultancy. “It shows their belief in the success of a large downtown San Jose office project.”

A group led by San Francisco-based TMG Partners and San Jose-based Valley Oak Partners sold its ownership interest to an affiliate of Boston Properties, the county records show.

TMG and Valley Oak had originally teamed up to buy numerous parcels needed for the land where the office campus would sprout, and also guided the project through a multi-faceted city approval process.

“At the site of one of the biggest technology hubs in the country, Platform 16 will help companies attract and retain the best and brightest minds to the area,” Bob Pester, a Boston Properties executive vice president, said at the time of Boston’s move to join the development in January 2019.

Among the distinctive features of Platform 16: The office buildings would include 16 terraces where office workers could hold meetings, work on projects, or enjoy leisure time.

An affiliate controlled by Boston Properties paid $134.75 million in cash for the stakes that the TMG and Valley Oak firms had owned, the county documents show.

“This is another example of local pioneering developers getting in on land entitlements early and profiting greatly as land values in downtown San Jose soar in anticipation of large tech leases,” said Mark Ritchie, president of Ritchie Commerical, a real estate firm.

The next major steps for the Platform 16 project: construction, leasing, and marketing efforts. Boston Properties and TMG Partners will be co-developers of the project, even though TMG and Valley Oak have sold their ownership interests.

CBRE commercial real estate agents Sherman Chan, Mark Schmidt, Mike Charters, and Will Schmidt have begun to scout for one or more tenants at Platform 16.

For 10 years, the last speculative office tower built in downtown San Jose was the second highrise in the Riverpark Towers campus on West San Carlos Street.

In mid-2017, Google sparked a surge of interest in downtown San Jose after its plans came to light. The Downtown West project envisioned by Google would create a transit-oriented neighborhood of office buildings, hotel facilities, housing, shops, restaurants, cultural hubs, and entertainment centers near the local train station where the search giant would employ 25,000.

Then in June 2019, Adobe broke ground on a brand-new office tower that would dramatically expand the size of the tech titan’s downtown San Jose complex of three buildings by adding a fourth high-rise to its headquarters campus.

In November 2019, veteran developer Jay Paul Co. broke ground on a 19-story office tower that’s expected to be the tallest office highrise in downtown San Jose and is the first speculative office tower being built without a signed tenant.

Earlier this month, Canada-based Westbank, a mega-builder that is one of the world’s most respected developers, teamed up with local developer Gary Dillabough in a $184 million deal to buy an ownership stake in six crucial downtown San Jose properties. Among the projects: the long-anticipated Museum Place office tower and the renovation of the historic Bank of Italy highrise.

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