Category: Press Release

Sunnyvale residents have been waiting on a downtown for 30 years. Now that its been cleared of all of its mothballs, here’s what’s new.

On October 9th, Sunnyvale will be holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the reopening of Redwood Square, a block in the core of downtown where mixed-used luxury apartments and commercial buildings are the backdrop to a cluster of Redwood trees.

The celebration is said to mark the near end of the redevelopment of the downtown core, more so the end of the area being one big construction zone.

“Everybody’s been waiting for the downtown for nearly three decades,” said Curtis Leigh, principal at Hunter Properties, the developer who built the commercial-use spaces. Read the full article here.

When Hunter Properties developed the headquarters for Box, a content management system provider, in 2015 at Redwood City’s Crossing 900, the company didn’t know that it would purchase the strip mall across the street nine years later.

“I used to park there a lot when we were building that site, so we knew that site well,” said Curtis Leigh, principal at Cupertino-based commercial development firm Hunter Properties.

The firm purchased Sequoia Station from developer Lowe in 2023 for more than $50 million with its sights set on near-term cosmetic improvement and long-term redevelopment.  Read the full article here.

When Macy’s closed its 40-year-old Sunnyvale outlet in 2019, it left an ugly hole in the city’s historic downtown.

But that void is about to be filled, as an innovative, office and retail project nears completion.

“We are on the three-yard line,” said Curtis Leigh, a principal and partner with Hunter Partners, which is developing Washington Offices, a two-building complex that includes 595,162 square feet of office space and 20,000 square feet of retail.

It won’t take long to cross that goal line, said Josh Rupert, director of development for Hunter Partners. Work on the complex is in its final stages, and if a client were ready, “we could turn space over to them very quickly.” Read the full article here

Hunter Properties, LLC wasn’t sure what it’d find in Folsom. The company had never had a project outside of the Bay Area, and the Shops at Folsom Ranch was its first opportunity.  The company had never had a project outside of the Bay Area, and The Shops at Folsom Ranch was its first opportunity.

What it found, according to Josh Rupert, was success. It’s just been an incredibly good project for us”, said Rupert, direct of development for Hunter Properties.

The project is an almost 28,000-square-foot commercial spot with six buildings. It’s completely leased, though construction remained ongoing in July, Rupert said. Read the full article here.

 

Folsom Ranch’s next retail center Alder Creek Marketplace could break ground within the next 12 months, and prospective tenants are already in talks to join. The 95,000-square-foot shopping center will include four pads for drive-thru restaurants and a gas station, three multitenant shop buildings, and a 55,000-square-foot grocery anchor space. The grocery store will be the first in the master planned community, which is expected to include thousands of new homes, retail projects, medical developments
and a sports complex.

Folsom officials awarded entitlements for Alder Creek Marketplace earlier this year. Leasing eff orts have been ongoing since last year. The project is being spearheaded by Cupertino-based Hunter Properties Inc. and its capital partner PCCP LLC, who also developed The Shops at Folsom Ranch retail center across the street.

Josh Rupert, director of development for Hunter Properties, said approximately 60% of the planned spaces have either received letters of intent from interested parties or are in negotiations on leases. Leasing materials indicate a national grocer has signed a letter of intent for the center’s anchor space.

“Our goal is to be greater than 75% leased by the time we start construction, and we are heading toward that goal,” Rupert said.

Leasing broker Steve Edwards of The Edwards Co. said the center is focusing on bringing in best-in-class operators, both regional and national, ranging from food and beverage operators and soft goods retailers to daily needs users such as the grocery anchor and agas station. The Edwards Co. also handles leasing for the developer’s property across the street, which Edwards said is now 100% leased.

As part of the project, the developer is required to build roads to the west and south of the project site, as well as make other landscaping and infrastructure improvements in the area.

“We have four pad sites that will be ground leases, so all we will be responsible for before turning them over to the tenant is to have infrastructure subbed to them,” he said. “We expect to have infrastructure work done within approximately 12 months.”

A project estimate was not available for Alder Creek Marketplace. Rupert said his team iscurrently working with consultants on building designs for the remaining shop buildingsand expect to have plans submitted for permits by the end of the year.

He anticipates the review and approval process will take several months. While a start date on construction will be market-driven, he said, the hope is to break ground in the second or third quarter of 2025.

“Folsom Ranch in its entirety has been an incredibly exciting project to be part of,” Rupert said. “The nice thing about being the developer of both Alder Creek Market place and The Shops is that we can look at these two properties and merchandise them as a single entity. We are looking to bring in complementary tenants to what we’ve already been able to do at The Shops and believe we will be able to do something that the city of Folsom and the Folsom Ranch community will be very proud of.”

Ranked by Greater Bay Area square feet in the pipeline
Locally Researched by: Ahavah Revis, Silicon Valley Business Journal
This List includes commercial developers with projects located in the Greater Bay Area, which is defined as Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties. Square footages pertain to Greater Bay Area development as of June 2024. Read the full article here.

A proposal has been submitted for a new shopping center in the Folsom Ranch development, which would include the master planned community’s first grocery store.

Cupertino-based Hunter Properties Inc., which is in the process of developing The Shops at Folsom Ranch along East Bidwell Street just south of the Highway 50 interchange, has submitted a proposal seeking entitlements for a nearby grocery-anchored shopping center, which is being called Alder Creek Marketplace.

“The project was just recently submitted to the city and is in the early stages of the entitlement process,” said Christine Brainerd, communication director for the city of Folsom, in an email.
Brainerd said the proposal is seeking a planned development permit for the 95,000-square-foot shopping center.

The center would include four pads for drive-thru restaurants and a gas station, three multi-tenant shop buildings, and a 55,000-square-foot grocery anchor space, in addition to 423 on-site parking spaces, according to the proposal.

Alder Creek Marketplace is proposed for a lot across the street from The Shops at Folsom Ranch within the fast-growing master planned community that is expected to include thousands of new homes, retail projects, medical developments and a sports complex.

Josh Rupert, director of development for Hunter Properties, said his team is currently responding to comments from the city regarding the project. Aside from some additional studies needed, the city didn’t raise any major concerns about the initial proposal. Rupert said they plan to submit updated plans later this month with the hope of having the entitlement review no later than January 2024. As part of the project, the developer will be required to build roads to the west and south of the site.

“We would love to submit our building permit package sometime in the second or third quarter of next year, with construction starting in late-2024, but it will largely be dependent on the market,” Rupert said.

Rupert declined to state how much the project is estimated to cost.

Lease marketing for spaces at Alder Creek Marketplace has already started. Broker Steve Edwards of The Edwards Company said his team is currently talking to a number of potential tenants but no leases have been signed yet. The main priority is to secure the project’s grocery anchor first, but Edwards said they’ve received significant interest for the entire project.

Both Alder Creek Marketplace and The Shops at Folsom Ranch are being spearheaded by Hunter Properties and its capital partners PCCP LLC. Rupert said the partnership is bullish about the Folsom Ranch development.

“The ability to be surrounded by the amount of residential we will have here, the number of medical complexes, and frankly, the opportunity to be creative and start a project right at the beginning, at its infancy, for any development team you would jump at that chance,” Rupert said. “I will admit, we rarely get out of the Bay Area, but when we were approached by our capital partners about this opportunity at Folsom Ranch, it didn’t take long for us to say yes.”

Just two years after the Macy’s shopping mall was demolished in the center of Downtown Sunnyvale, construction has moved fast for phase two. A recent site visit by YIMBY has shown two seven-story offices and the twelve-story apartment complex have topped out, with facade installation underway. Hunter Properties and Sares Regis Group are jointly responsible for the project, part of the 36-acre Cityline Sunnyvale master plan. Read the full article here.

There were plenty of smiles in downtown Sunnyvale on May 9 as city leaders and local developers gathered for the topping off ceremony of the latest phase of the Cityline project. The ceremony is steeped in tradition and dates back to 700 AD in Scandinavia. Read the full article here.