Bay Area Campus Trades for $64M

5300 Hellyer Ave. Photo courtesy of CBRE

A fully leased, advanced manufacturing and office campus in San Jose, Calif. has traded for $64.3 million. According to CommercialEdge data, Advanced Pain Medical Group—through its affiliate, J&J Properties—bought the two-building portfolio from Empire Square Group.

Joe Moriarty, Scott Prosser and Jack DePuy of CBRE Capital Markets brokered the sale on behalf of the buyer. A different CBRE team arranged $44 million in acquisition financing for J&J Properties. The 10-year, fixed rate, non-recourse loan was provided by Goldman Sachs Bank, CommercialEdge data shows.

Empire Square Group sold the asset at roughly $401 per square foot, below the Bay Area—comprising the East and South Bay—market average recorded in year-to-date sales through September ($593), CommercialEdge data shows. The two properties previously changed hands in 2019, when Empire Square acquired them in a $55.5 million portfolio transaction from Drawbridge Realty Trust.

The two buildings are located at 5300 and 5350 Hellyer Ave. and comprise 60,000 and 100,000 square feet of office and R&D space, respectively. Since its construction in 1999, the campus has been occupied by Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions (CAES), a microelectronics manufacturer serving the aerospace and defense industries. The tenant has made several improvements to the property over the years to suit its specialized manufacturing needs.

An attractive submarket

According to CBRE’s announcement, more than 3,000 residential units and over 400,000 square feet of new retail were completed recently in the surrounding area. The campus is located just over 2 miles from state routes 101 and 85. Corporate neighbors include Velodyne Lidar—its own campus trading for $52 million to W.P. Carey earlier this year—Nokia, Genista Biosciences, and Teradyne, among others.

Advanced Pain Medical Group owns two other properties in the San Jose – South submarket, at 845 Embedded Way and 5325 Hellyer Ave., CommercialEdge data shows. Both were acquired from DivcoWest in separate transactions, for $12.5 and $51.2 million, respectively.

According to CBRE’s Scott Prosser, the group’s most recent transaction highlights South San Jose’s fundamental shift over the past years, with nearly 2.5 million square feet of tenants and owners that have relocated from northern parts of Silicon Valley since 2017.

The submarket’s vacancy rate for office properties reached 7.5 percent in September, faring far better than the overall Bay Area market—which recorded a 170-basis-point month-over-month drop in vacancy, to 16.5 percent.