Bay Area R&D Facility Trades for $82M

In an $81.5 million deal, Cannae Partners and Blue Vista Capital Management have sold the Silicon Valley Innovation Hub in San Jose. The building is fully leased to Merck.

The buyer, Klein Investments Family Limited Partnership, was represented by Michael Hartel and Nick Velasquez of Colliers International.

The seller was represented by a Newmark team comprising Steven Golubchik, executive vice chairman & president of western region capital markets; Edmund Najera, vice chairman; Jonathan Schaefler, senior managing director; and Darren Hollak, managing director.

The 146,159-square-foot building is located at 3011 N First Street inside Silicon Valley’s Golden Triangle. Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and Dell, among other companies, maintain offices nearby.

The hub will be used for semiconductor research and features a Class 10 cleanroom—a tightly controlled space that represents the second-highest level of cleanliness, according to the 209E Federal Standards.

The replacement cost of the property is upward of $200 million, Newmark estimates, and it’s unlikely a developer could get permits for all the chemicals that are used onsite and grandfathered in.

Another issue is sourcing power, which Newmark’s Hollak noted has become increasingly hard to find in Silicon Valley.

“Investors are now looking to acquire high-powered R&D buildings to ‘power-bank’ the asset for the future … with the expectation that power will become increasingly scarce,,” he said. “Further, with investors becoming conscious of capital outlays, the robust existing improvements are more valuable now than ever.”

This year, Amkor Technology received approval from the Peoria, Ariz., City Council to build a more than 500,000-square-foot, $2 billion advanced semiconductor packaging and test facility—the largest outsourced advanced packaging plant in the U.S.—in a multi-phase project that will bring 2,000 jobs to the Arizona community.