Cushman & Wakefield to Manage 8.1 MSF Bay Area Technology Park

Stanford Research Park. Image courtesy of Cushman & Wakefield

Stanford University has tapped Cushman & Wakefield’s Northern California Asset Services team to provide the full suite of property management services for a 14-building, 1.1 million-square-foot office campus, alongside a 7 million-square-foot triple-net ground lease portfolio in Palo Alto, Calif. The firm will provide leasing, asset management, project and development services, as well as leverage brokerage and sustainability operations across the campus.

Senior Managing Director Marsha Ramsey leads the Cushman & Wakefield team overseeing the portfolio’s property management. Director of Operations Trude Hursh and Senior Assistant Property Manager Christ Narayan will be managing the campus’ Transitions and Quality Control Services. Additional members include Assistant Controller Phil Blair, Director & Occupier Services Lead of Project and Development Services Jason Jacobson, Managing Director Rachel Schiftan and General Manager Alissa Lee. Vice Chairmen Ben Paul and David Hiebert will provide brokerage and leasing services.

Within the world’s first university research park

The portfolio in question is part of Stanford Research Park, a 700-acre, 10 million-square-foot office and technology campus located around Page Mill Road. Its first building broke ground in 1951, and was the headquarters of high-tech pioneer Varian Associates.

The initial project, called the Stanford Industrial Park, started as a joint initiative between Stanford University and the City of Palo Alto. In the 1950s, the city annexed several parcels of SRP-owned land for the the creation of the world’s first university research park.

The park’s historic tenants include Apple, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox and Lockheed. Their work there produced many innovations such as the microwave, personal computer mainframes, laser printers and ethernet cabling, as well as the growth of several social media companies.

READ ALSO: How Property Managers Can Unlock Proptech’s Potential

Overall, the complex currently has more than 150 tenants in the tech, engineering and life science sectors including Google, Tesla, VMware and Jazz Pharmaceuticals. Tesla uses its space for the development and design of electric vehicle battery prototypes. VMware, the campus’ largest tenant, uses its space for its cloud computing hardware and software solutions operations.

With quick access to El Camino Real and Interstate 280, Stanford Research Park provides quick access to much of the Bay Area and is within 2 miles of the University’s main campus. Downtown San Francisco and San Jose are 28 and 15 miles away, respectively.

Silicon Valley’s office sphere

Despite attracting large investments from Google and Meta, Silicon Valley’s office sector has struggled in the face of continuing obstacles, including economic uncertainty and corporate downsizing driven by an omnipresent hybrid work schedule. Still, the area’s overall year-over-year fundamentals are positive. According to data from a fourth quarter 2022 report from Kidder Mathews, the region has seen 479,000 square feet of leasing activity, alongside 8 million square feet of new deliveries year-over-year.

Recent headlines from around the area include Prime Data Centers’ November 2022 groundbreaking on a new 80,000-square-foot turnkney, build-to-suit data center in Santa Clara. That same month, Blue River Technology purchased an 83,590-square-foot office building in the same area from Toeniskoetter Development.