Uber, Alexandria Score Office Deal with NBA’s Warriors in San Fran

by Gail Kalinoski

Chase Center Aerial View

San Francisco—Uber Technologies Inc. and Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., an urban office REIT focused on life science and technology campuses, are teaming up on two office buildings to be constructed as part of the Golden State Warriors’ Chase Center arena project in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood.

Uber, the ride-hailing company, bought a stake in the office buildings, which will have 580,000 square feet, The San Francisco Business Times reported. The firm plans to occupy at least half of the space when it is complete in 2019 and has the option to take all the space after it opens.

The buildings will be managed by Alexandria, which is also developing Uber’s new headquarters in Mission Bay, according to an Alexandria spokesperson. Located at 1455 Third St. and 1515 Third St., those buildings – totaling 435,000 square feet – are set to open in late 2018 or early 2019.

Alexandria has become a minority partner in the office properties with an undisclosed stake, SFBT revealed. Commercial Property Executive was unable to confirm that aspect of the deal with the REIT by press time.

Uber’s Head of Global Workplace Adony Beniares told SFBT that Uber and the Warriors have equal equity stakes in the office buildings, which will be located along Third Street. Beniares didn’t say how much Uber paid for the stake but did say it offered the tech company more security than a lease. Uber will have more than 2 million square feet of office space in the Bay Area, much of it in Mission Bay, once the four office buildings are completed. It also has offices at three Market Street buildings and an office in Palo Alto, Calif. The business news site noted that the Warriors deal comes at the same time that Uber plans to cut back on a previously announced move to Uptown Station in Oakland. Instead of moving up to 3,000 employees there, it will only move several hundred and is looking to sublease about half of the 300,000-square-foot property that is under construction.

The Warriors Chase Center mixed-use project takes up 11 acres in Mission Bay and will comprise the 18,000-seat arena, the two office buildings, 100,000 square feet of retail and a plaza. It’s located on land Salesforce.com sold in 2015, which the firm bought in 2010 from Alexandria.

Alexandria has a North American asset base of 25.2 million square feet as of Dec. 31, including science and technology campuses in San Francisco, South San Francisco, Boston, New York City, San Diego, Seattle, Maryland and the Research Triangle in North Carolina. As of late last year, the REIT operated about 3.7 million square feet in the San Francisco Bay Area. In December, Merck & Co. said it had chosen the REIT to develop a 294,000-square-foot, LEED Platinum facility in South San Francisco – where it operates more than 1.5 million square feet of space – for its Merck Research Laboratories division. That project is expected to be completed in 2019.