Redwood City Becomes A New Startup Hub
This offering group consisted of a six unit apartment opportunity in Redwood City, CA located in the heart of Redwood City’s most desirable rental neighborhood, the Mount Carmel District. For those of us intimately familiar with the Redwood City rental market, there is no location better than the Arch, Birch, and Clinton Streets between Hopkins and Whipple, West of El Camino. Any property on these three streets is considered to be a “trophy” asset class by portfolio owners. These streets are pure pride of ownership streets in the region and have to be seen to be understood. Generally, assets in these areas are bought and held for generations due to the rental demand that they generate for their owners. The group is in close proximity to Mid-Peninsula development projects including the Stanford Campus, Facebook’s Willow Campus addition, the Bohanon Park development, and the new Nia Hotel. The Stanford, Bohanon, and Nia Hotel projects have already broken ground and are underway. The new Facebook Willow Campus is expected to be completed by 2021.
The New Stanford Campus
Add to this the addition of the new Stanford University Campus on Bay Street in Redwood City. Some 2,400 employees will work on the site of the former Mid-Point Technology Park off Highway 101, about 5 miles from the main campus. The new campus will initially develop 21 of the 35 available acres. It will feature modern offices, a fitness center and pool, a town square and a park, among other amenities. Stanford has also agreed to pay for the installation of a new public transport trolley that will service the new campus and the Fair Oaks District where the Menlo Gate Group Twelve property is located. The new trolley will allow easy access from the Fair Oaks District to the vibrant Redwood City Downtown corridor. Groundbreaking has commenced, pads have been poured, and construction is underway.
The New Facebook Campus
Facebook is expanding again. It’s been just over two years since Facebook moved into its 430,000-square-foot, headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Now the company is ready to expand again, and this time it wants to build a lot more than just office space for its workers. Plans have been approved for Facebook’s construction of what it will call its “Willow Campus,” a “mixed-use village” that sounds like a combination of a strip mall, a condo complex and an office park. The new campus, which will be right behind Facebook’s existing headquarters in Menlo Park on a site the company acquired in 2015. It includes office, retail, a grocery store, a pharmacy, and much more. All of this will be open to the public, according to the company’s blog post. There will be 125,000 square feet of retail space in total, and 1.75 million square feet of office space. A Facebook spokesperson announced that the new Willow Campus project will be completed by 2021. This campus will be in addition to the company’s existing office space, not a replacement for it.
Bohanon Park Development
The Bohannon Company has nearly completed construction of the new Menlo Gateway, an eight-story, 210,000-square-foot office building in Menlo Park. The mixed-use project also consists of a 1,040-space parking structure and a 41,000-square-foot fitness center. This property is located adjacent to the construction of a new hotel along the 101 corridor in Menlo Park. “The supply-constrained Menlo Park office market, combined with demographic and economic tailwinds, provide exceptional fundamentals for a project of this scale and quality,” Michael Mestel, Square Mile’ principal, said in a press release. The project is part of the first phase of Menlo Gateway, a 16-acre master-planned development comprised of a 250-room Autograph Collection hotel currently under construction and a total of approximately 500,000 square feet of office space to be built in phases. Located at 100 Independence Drive, the office building capitalizes on the site’s excellent visibility from the highway, and is oriented to maximize southern exposure and natural light. Menlo Park is known as a hub for high technology and attracts many of the nation’s most prominent technology and venture capital firms, including Intuit, SRI International, TE Corporation, Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. A second phase of the Menlo Gateway project will include two additional office buildings, a café/restaurant, as well as neighborhood retail and community facilities, all totaling roughly 500,000 square feet of space.
Large high end residential developments were also recently completed on both Willow Rd. and Hamilton St. in this area. The Willow Rd. project was entitled and completed by the Mid-Peninsula group whereas the 777 Hamilton project was brought to market by Sequoia’s, William Butler. The recent activity by both these large and respectable builders stands as a strong indicator as to the highly valuable future for real estate in this area. Menlo Gate’s latest acquisition is literally at the epicenter of all these developments!
If you missed this great opportunity, please keep an eye out for Menlo Gate’s next offering. We expect our next group to be published to our participant list in May of 2018. You can also reach out to us via e-mail if you have any questions or to advise us of your level of interest in our next group. We can be reached at investing@menlogate.com. You may also call us directly at 650.255.9460 with any questions.