San Jose Water sells several sites to Bay Area developer

SAN JOSE >> San Jose Water has sold several South Bay properties to a veteran real estate player for nearly $16 million.

The water company, a unit of San Jose-based SJW Group, has sold parcels in San Jose, Campbell and Milpitas, according to documents filed Oct. 29 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office.

Valley Oak Partners, a San Jose-based real estate investment and real estate company, paid a total of just under $15.8 million to buy the four parcels in three cities, the deeds on file with the county show.

The sites are all vacant land parcels, according to county assessment records.

Valley Oak Partners paid cash for the properties, the property deeds show. Here’s what the development company paid for each of the parcels:

• San Jose. A 3.5-acre site near Montague Expressway and Pecten Court. The price was $6 million.

• Milpitas. A 0.1-acre site near Montague Expressway and Pecten Court. The price was $1.1 million.

• Campbell. A 2.2-acre site at 320 Virginia Ave. was bought for $5.65 million.

• San Jose. A 1.1-acre site near the interchange of Lawrence Expressway and Doyle Road was bought for $2.6 million.

The combined purchase price that Valley Oak Partners paid was $15.75 million.

“We have maintained a strategy of divesting assets that are no longer used and useful for water utility purposes,” said Liann Walborsky, a spokesperson for San Jose Water. “The properties fall into that category, and are being sold so we can continue to serve the community in other ways.”

SJW Group subsidiaries provide water services in parts of the Bay Area as well as neighborhoods in Texas, Connecticut and Maine.

Over the 12-month period that ended in September, SJW Group generated $565.7 million in revenue and a profit of $55.7 million.

In 2017, Valley Oak Partners demonstrated a knack for spotting a site that could become a development hot spot.

Valley Oak teamed up with TMG Partners to assemble a site in downtown San Jose for a bigtech campus at Autumn Parkway and West Julian Street — on a site that’s next to Google’s proposed Downtown West neighborhood.

Eventually, Boston Properties and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board launched a joint venture to develop the Autumn Parkway site, a project called Platform 16.

Boston Properties bought out the ownership stakes in the property that had been possessed by Valley Oak and TMG Partners.