homesmillbrae.com » Office Buildings

Bay Area job market to top US, California – Alameda Times

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 08:24:11 +0000

Bay Area job market to top U.S., California

The Bay Area job market should expand more quickly than California and the nation over the next two years, primarily because of solid employment growth in the San Jose and San Francisco area, although the Oakland area should expand as well, a report released Thursday shows.

During 2013 and 2014, job totals in the Bay Area should expand by 7.2 percent, the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute reported.

The only job losses expected in the Bay Area over the two years will come from local, state and federal government agencies, the report predicted.

Ellis Partners buys East Bay buildings

Ellis Partners has bought two office buildings in Livermore and one in Pleasanton in separate transactions, the realty investor and developer said Thursday.

San Francisco-based Ellis bought a 145,000-square-foot, two-building office campus just north of Interstate 580 on North Canyons Parkway in Livermore. The deal for the two buildings, known as North Canyons Tech Park, was arranged through realty brokerage HFF.

Ellis also bought a 64,000-square-foot office building known as Franklin Corporate Center, located at 5100 Franklin Drive in Pleasanton. The deal was arranged by commercial realty firm Colliers International. Ellis will undertake a major renovation of the Pleasanton building, including new lobbies.

LightSail

captures $37 million in VC cash

Berkeley-based LightSail Energy, a developer of new technologies for energy storage, has landed $37.3 million in Series D venture capital financing.

Investors Bill Gates, Peter Thiel, Khosla Ventures, and Innovacorp were among the notable financiers that participated in the venture funding round.

Founded in 2009, LightSail Energy has developed technologies to make renewable energy such as solar and wind power available at times when the power is needed, rather than only when they are available. LightSail’s storage system enables solar farms to store energy cheaply, then deliver the power when it’s needed.

— Staff

Article source: http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_21960946/biz-buzz

Fewer vacant office spaces

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:27:17 +0000

By Mark Puente, Times Staff Writer

In Print: Friday, October 28, 2011

Click here for reuse options!

Story Tools

Comments

Contact the editor

Email Newsletters

The Tampa Bay commercial real estate market is no longer in the basement but remains far from the penthouse.

A bright spot in a national report released this week shows the commercial sector has improved in the bay area and other parts of Florida amid the languishing economy and lackluster job growth.

The report ranked the bay area as the 33rd best of 51 metro areas for investment in commercial real estate. Overall, the bay area improved to fair this year from poor last year, according to the “Emerging Trends in Real Estate” report by the nonprofit Urban Land Institute and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“It shows we’re moving in the right direction,” said Ray Sandelli, head of the Tampa office of the CB Richard Ellis commercial real estate firm. “It will also challenge us to improve.”

Experts attribute the improvement locally to the commercial market not being overbuilt during the boom, and real estate prices correcting downward to match today’s market.

Statewide, Miami ranked 17th and recorded the biggest gains among major markets for investment opportunities. Foreign cash is flowing into the city because of political instability in Latin America, the report said. Orlando ranked 29th; Jacksonville ranked 40th. Detroit, Cleveland and Las Vegas were at the bottom.

Apartments are the safest place to park cash here and across the country, the report said. Nationally, brokers and investors of industrial properties, shopping centers, hotels and office buildings face a “slowing, grind-it-out recovery” in 2012.

Investment cash is gushing toward the 24-hour global gateways: Washington, D.C., San Francisco, New York City, Boston and Seattle. Money is also following young professionals to pedestrian-friendly cities such as Portland, Ore., Seattle and Austin, Texas.

Not all experts buy into the report.

Larry Richey, senior managing director of Cushman Wakefield in Tampa, said the bay area is doing better and will never be near the top when compared to big metro areas on the East Coast and West Coast. But it would rank high among similarly sized metro areas.

Vacancy rates have dropped in office and industrial buildings as companies move to bigger offices or relocate from outside the region, he said. He pointed to Time Warner’s recent pledge to create 500 jobs in Hillsborough County and to spend $5 million on new facilities over the next five years.

The report, Richey said, doesn’t reflect all the gains made in 2011.

“It’s the most improvement we’ve seen in the last five years,” he said.

[Last modified: Oct 27, 2011 09:54 PM]

Click here for reuse options!

Copyright 2011 St. Petersburg Times

Click here to post a comment

You must enable javascript to view and add comments.

Join the discussion: Click to view comments, add yours

#simplemodal-container a.modalCloseImg{ background:none; right:-16px; width: 30px; height: 30px; filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=”/universal/images/modal-close.png”, sizingMethod=’scale’); }

Article source: http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/realestate/tampa-bays-commercial-real-estate-sector-rebounds-report-says/1198914

Commercial Real Estate: Savoy sells three Petaluma buildings

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 19:52:57 +0000

Sales of 18 former Equity Office buildings in Petaluma has been grabbing headlines for the past 12 months, but another Petaluma portfolio of buildings in Redwood Business Park has changed hands.

San Francisco-based Savoy Corp. sold three buildings totaling nearly 88,000 square feet at 5330 Old Redwood Hwy., 1341-1353 Redwood Way and 1363-1367 Redwood Way to PBJ Acquisitions, LLC, in mid-June for $5.1 million, or about $58 a square foot. Savoy had the property listed for $6.5 million.

One of the former Savoy buildings in Petaluma

Formed in March, PBJ is an investor in value-add Northern California properties, according to Bill Sumski, a San Francisco real estate attorney who has also been involved in major Bay Area redevelopment projects and worked with PBJ. Tony Crossley and Tim Maas of Colliers International San Francisco Investments represented Savoy the recent sale.

“We want to leverage off the good momentum in the Petaluma marketplace,” Mr. Sumski said. “There is opportunity to take advantage of the increase in occupancy and increase in rents. Generally, we’re buy and hold.”

The investors are looking for continued northern migration of companies from southern to northern Marin County to Petaluma, he said.

Haden Ongago and Mark Carrington of Cornish Carey Commercial Newmark Knight Frank are marketing the properties, which are 65 percent occupied. Significant tenants are Union Bank, Broadcom and Computer Associates.

Savoy sold a 34,000-square-foot building at 1445 N. McDowell Blvd. for about $2 million in July 2010. Savoy sold it and a 62,000-square-foot San Francisco office building to Rona Real Estate, LLC, for a total of $15 million.

***

Petaluma commercial real estate experts have been expecting the string of large leases and property sales to company owners to bring down the very high office vacancy rate, and the latest figures bear that out.

Nearly 228,000 square feet of Petaluma office space came off the market in the 12 months ending in June, according to new figures from Keegan Coppin. Together with nearly 19,000 square feet of net space absorption over the period in Santa Rosa, net absorption countywide was 184,3oo square feet.

Over the 12 months, the office vacancy rate countywide fell more than a percentage point from a high figure of 23.8 percent to a still high 22.4 percent at the end of June, according to the brokerage.

The Petaluma office vacancy rate fell nearly three percentage points to 30.9 percent at the end of the second quarter with 970,000 square feet available from 33.8 percent for 1.06 million square feet vacant.

Cornish Carey Commerical Newmark Knight Frank reports that Sonoma County had 123,000 square feet of class A office space net absorption in just the first half of this year, with a net of 43,000 square feet coming off the market in Petaluma and nearly 60,000 square feet in Santa Rosa.

Little of the net leasing activity this year has been for class B office space, which makes up roughly half the 8 million-square-foot Sonoma County market, the brokerage reported. Net absorption was negative 14,000 square feet for that class of space.

The Sonoma County industrial market fared far better over the past 12 months, according to Keegan Coppin. Thanks to net space absorption of 217,000 square feet in Petaluma, 209,000 square feet in Santa Rosa and 185,000 square feet from the Sonoma County Airport-area business parks north, the county’s major industrial markets had 585,000 square feet less space available for lease than a year earlier.

In just the past quarter, the countywide industrial vacancy rate fell to 12.2 percent from 13.4 percent when the first quarter ended, the brokerage reported.

In Petaluma, the change in available industrial real estate to lease was dramatic. The vacancy rate fell to 12.4 percent for 662,000 square feet available at the end of June from 17.5 percent for 940,000 square feet vacant, according to Keegan Coppin.

Topics: Commercial Real Estate 7-18-2011 | Categories: Commercial Real Estate, Industry News

Article source: http://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/36513/commercial-real-estate-savoy-sells-three-petaluma-buildings/

SCHNITZER, Harold J.

Sun, 15 May 2011 16:13:17 +0000

Harold J. Schnitzer, businessman, philanthropist, and civic leader, passed away in Portland, Oregon early Wednesday morning, April 27, at the age of 87 of complications from cancer and diabetes.

He was born in Portland June 8, 1923. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in metallurgy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1944 and, immediately thereafter, served in the U.S. Army until his discharge in 1947. Upon returning to Portland he joined his brothers in the family scrap and steel business, Schnitzer Steel, working alongside them until 1950, at which time he left and founded Harsch Investment Properties, a leading diversified owner and operator of industrial, office, retail and multi-family properties in five Western states. He served as President and Chairman of the Board for two decades before being joined by his son Jordan in 1970, who now serves as President. In the Bay Area, Harold’s first purchase was the Claremont Hotel in 1954, which was owned until 1998. Additional real estate holdings in the Bay Area include, the 450 Sutter Building, Mason O’Farrell Garage and numerous industrial and office buildings in the East Bay. Together, he and his son grew the company into one of the largest, privately held real estate companies in the western United States.

Throughout his life he focused on three things: family, the business and his community. Harold learned early on from his parents, Sam and Rose Schnitzer, who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s, the responsibility of making a difference with his life. They taught him and his siblings (Manuel, Morris, Mollie, Edith, Gilbert and Leonard) the importance of giving back to your community.

In 1949 he met and married Arlene Director. Married for 62 years, they were life-long partners in business, the arts and philanthropy. Their son Jordan was born in 1951.

Over a career of 60 years there have been hundreds of organizations and causes that have benefited from his leadership and financial support. Harold served on the board of Lewis Clark College for 16 years, a Life Trustee since 1995. His service to the Portland Art Museum spanned 21 years, ultimately as Chairman of the Board from 1997 to 2001. He and Arlene are especially proud of establishing the Center for Northwest Art, and a curatorial and annual artist awards program. They also were major collectors of Han and pre-Han ceramics that led to establishing the nationally recognized Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Collection of Early Chinese Art. They gifted a number of works from the collection to the Portland Art Museum along with endowing the position of Curator of Asian Art. Harold and Arlene have a residence in the Bay Area and they have been longtime supporters of the Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco and many other Bay Area causes.

More recently Harold provided the lead gift establishing the Harold Schnitzer Diabetes Health Center at Oregon Health Science University (OHSU) in 2007, one of only ten centers in the nation treating children and adults and the only one on the West Coast. A diabetic since his early 40s, he valued good health care and appreciated its connection to the quality and longevity of life. The Center is his expression of helping others in their struggle with diabetes.

Harold was always interested in ensuring that young people have the same educational opportunities that he had. He had a lifelong interest in funding scholarships and educational grants, and that ultimately led to him establishing Judaic studies programs at both the University of Oregon and Portland State University.

Harold served the City of Portland on a variety of projects including the development of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts. Because of his leadership and philanthropy, the city named its symphony hall, the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, in honor of his wife, Arlene.

He has been honored by numerous civic organizations regionally and nationally in partnership with his wife Arlene including the following: Doctor of Humane Letters from Portland State University, Distinguished Service Award from the University of Oregon, Aubrey Watzek Award from Lewis Clark College, Portland First Citizen Award 1995, the Outstanding Philanthropist Award from the National Society of Fundraising Executives and an honorary doctorate degree from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Harold is survived by his wife, Arlene, his son Jordan, his two granddaughters Arielle and Audria, his brother Gilbert who resides in San Francisco, California, his sister Mollie who resides in Beverly Hills, California, and numerous nieces and nephews.

Even during the last days of his life he was still working and planning on how to make life better for everyone else around him.

A Memorial Service was held on Wednesday, May 11th, 2011.

This article appeared on page Z99 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/15/MNSCHNITZE39.DTL