A stalled housing project on Berkeley’s former People’s Park can resume construction. In a unanimous ruling by the state Supreme Court, the University of California, Berkeley can build housing for 1,111 graduate and postgraduate students, as well as unhoused, low-income residents.
The court’s decision didn’t come without a fight. Since the university in 2018 announced its $312M plan to develop housing on the 2.8-acre park, opponents have attempted to derail it with lawsuits, protests, overnight occupations of the site and event attempts to sabotage construction equipment.
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Northern California is in the midst of a multiyear housing crisis.
“The housing components of the project are desperately needed by our students and unhoused people,” UC Berkeley said in a statement.
The university only provides housing for 23% of its students, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
LEASES
Seven new retailers signed two-year leases totaling 7,700 SF for pop-up space at Embarcadero Center. Plant store Plant’d snagged the biggest lease, around 2K SF, at the Boston Properties-owned asset. Additional new tenants at the 3.3M SF mixed-use property include Devil’s Teeth Baking Co., Rosalind Bakery, Teranga, Basil the Bold and Whackdonuts.
“The new leases stem from both BXP’s internal ‘pop-up’ program, and the city-initiated Vacant to Vibrant program,” the landlord said in a statement.
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Amid reports that Bay Area life sciences real estate is struggling, pharmaceutical giant Amgen put 100K SF of lab and office space up for sublease in San Carlos, The Real Deal reported.
Amgen is reportedly marketing the fifth and sixth floors of the Alexandria Center for Life Science, a 278K SF tower at 835 Industrial Road. Vacancy on the Peninsula totaled 22.2% at the end of the first quarter, according to CBRE.
SALES
An affiliate of Tidewater Capital last week purchased a seven-building, Class-A tech campus in Sunnyvale from Hines for roughly $100M, according to SiliconValley.com, which cited Santa Clara County property records. Hines acquired the 22-acre Oakmead West complex for $188M in 2019.
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Rhode Island-based Gilbane Development Co. paid $10M for a commercial building at 2587 Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley. It plans to convert the property to student housing, according to the San Francisco Business Times. CBRE represented the seller, 2565-2589 Telegraph Blake LLC, “a local private investor and related party of Anchor Valley Partners.”
The project is approved and entitled for an eight-story, 113K SF mixed-use building with four-, five- and six-bedroom units, plus 2,900 SF of ground-floor commercial space.
FINANCING
New York-based private equity firm and debt fund manager Northwind Group provided a $23M first mortgage through its closed-end debt funds for 18 unsold condos at 450 First St. in Los Altos. The financing marks Northwind’s first loan for Bay Area real estate via its debt funds. Edge Development Group of Pittsburgh built the four-story Silicon Valley asset.
