Bishop Ranch landed its biggest new tenant of the year, with acne treatment brand Face Reality signing a 38K SF headquarters lease in the Orchards area of San Ramon, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
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The skincare company signed the largest of 15 new leases at Bishop Ranch this year, totaling 254K SF. This is in addition to another 37 lease renewals. The entire development has 5M SF of Class-A office space in addition to 1M SF for retail and entertainment.
New tenants are signing up for longer-term leases than in the past at an average of seven years per lease. This is up from the three- to four-year leases typical of the last decade and a half.
Other significant lease renewals include Hill Physicians Medical Group's 72K SF lease, EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants' 22.5K SF lease and Summit Financial Group with 19K SF.
As some tenants downsize, Bishop Ranch owner Sunset Development Co. has looked to convert empty space into commercial and residential.
The 585-acre planned community located just off Interstate 680 was initially developed as a suburban office park with tenants like Chevron, AT&T and General Electric. A proposal to add up to 540 new residential units to the planned community is set to go before the San Ramon Planning Commission for review.
Another office-to-mixed-use conversion is also gaining traction in the area.
In San Jose, developer Jay Paul Co. has a plan in the works for CityView Plaza that would convert the 3.4M SF campus from office to residential with a retail and mixed-use component. The plan includes converted office space and a newly constructed tower, bringing 680 new homes to San Jose.
And in San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie on June 12 signed legislation to streamline office-to-residential conversions. The new rule allows for the additional property tax revenue generated by converting office space into housing to be reinvested to help cover development costs and make projects more financially viable.
