Santana West office complex draws big-tenant interest
SAN JOSE >> An eye-catching office building that has risen across the street from San Jose’s Santana Row has begun to entice big-time tenants, a top real estate executive says.
One Santana West, a new office building in San Jose, already is drawing significant interest, the chief executive officer of Federal Realty Investment Trust, the principal owner and developer of Santana Row, told analysts Nov. 4 during a conference call.
The tenant interest in the building, which totals 375,000 square feet, appears to be serious.
“We are having some consequential discussions with full-building users at Santana West,” Federal Realty CEO Donald Wood said during the call.
In recent years, Federal Realty has experienced plenty of success in attracting high-profile tech companies to lease large spaces within Santana Row, a destination mixed-use center consisting of shops, restaurants, homes, office buildings, a movie theater and a hotel.
Netapp has its headquarters in the 700 Santana Row office building that it is leasing, and Splunk has rented space in the 500 Santana Row office building.
One Santana West is the first of what is expected to be multiple office buildings across the street from Santana Row and is located on the site of the old Century theaters.
Century 21, the original theater, is being preserved.
Newmark, a commercial real estate company, is scouting for one or more tenants to fill up the eight-story Santana West office building.
Federal Realty is pitching the office complex as a venue where companies can safely and productively return their workers to the office.
“Our new Santana West building is a unique opportunity for a company to control its environment in a state-of-the-art facility,” Jan Sweetnam, Western region president of Federal Realty, said in June.
The floors in the building were crafted to be wide open so employees could gather closely or space out from one another, depending on circumstances and preferences.
Each floor can be configured to provide 54,000 square feet of continuous space, the type of elbow room that companies prize in modern office buildings.
It appears that Federal Realty’s preference is to lease the entire One Santana West to a single big user.
Big tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Bytedance are known to have begun quests to lease large chunks of office space in Silicon Valley.
During the conference call, Federal Realty executives said the marketing approach for the San Jose office building contrasts greatly with the strategy for office buildings in its other properties. Federal Realty’s office properties outside of San Jose could easily wind up with several tenants in a building.
“One Santana West is a different kettle of fish,” Wood said. “It’s one big building where we are looking for one big tenant to take the whole thing.” At another point in the call, Wood said, “We’re looking for a single tenant user for the building, at least the majority of the building.”