Boston Properties, one the largest office developers and owners in the country, has started construction just a stone’s throw away from Google’s 8M SF transit village.

On Wednesday, the REIT broke ground on Phase 1 of Platform 16, a billion-dollar, Class-A office development that will rise just north of San Jose’s Diridon Station.

The developer, which counts San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower among its many notable assets around the country, sees its 1.1M SF project as a break from the secluded suburban campuses that have long characterized Silicon Valley tech tenancy, according to Boston Properties Vice President of Development Aaron Fenton.

“We’re finding that tenants are thinking about where they want to be differently, particularly tech tenants in The Valley,” Fenton told Bisnow.

Boston Properties has a 55% stake in the project, for which it will oversee leasing and property management when complete. The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board came aboard last fall and owns the remaining 45%.

TMG Partners and Valley Oak Partners, which sold the project site for $134.8M earlier this year after bringing Boston Properties on in 2019, have stayed on to assist with development.

Boston Properties has positioned Platform 16, which will have floor plates of 28K SF to 88K SF and 16 landscaped terracing totaling over 44K SF, as especially suitable for tech tenants, which it bets will look elsewhere from not only Silicon Valley’s suburbs but also San Francisco’s office-development regulations, Fenton said.

San Francisco's Proposition E, a ballot measure tying allowable office development to affordable housing production and poised to pass as of Thursday, could push tenants to San Jose, he said.

“They’re going to be forced to look elsewhere, and that’s why I think San Jose is going to be a beneficiary of the politics in San Francisco, as will Oakland, candidly,” he said.

CBRE Senior Vice Presidents Sherman Chan and Michael Charters, along with CBRE Senior Managing Director Mark Schmidt and CBRE Vice President Will Schmidt, have started marketing the Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates-designed project to prospective tenants for Boston Properties and CPPIB.

Devcon Construction is the general contractor for Platform 16, which will have the capacity for up to 7,000 workers across the campus’ three six-story buildings. The first phase will include one building at 325 Autumn Parkway with 390K SF of rentable office space that Boston Properties expects will be ready in 2023.

Platform 16 will precede its much bigger neighbor by at least a few years. Still in the community outreach and planning phases, Google's Downtown West plan will include up to 7.3M SF of office and 5,900 units residential units, among other uses around Diridon Station.