Property shopping spree widens at premium sites

MOUNTAIN VIEW >> Real estate investors based in Silicon Valley have quietly collected seven acres of land in a choice section of Mountain View, an indication that property buyers still hunger for parcels in key areas.

A real estate group headed by veteran Bay Area developers and property investors Jason Peery and Roger Fields has bought several properties on East Charleston Road between North Rengstorff Avenue and San Antonio Road.

Affiliates controlled by Peery and Fields now own properties valued at nearly $40 million, according to Santa Clara County property documents. The sites are about a mile from the Googleplex headquarters of tech titan Alphabet and its famed subsidiary Google.

Peery is the son of Richard Peery, who decades ago teamed up with John Arrillaga to cofound Peery Arrillaga, a legendary Bay Area development company. Fields is a principal executive with Peninsula Land & Capital, an active and veteran Bay Area real estate firm with a wide array of holdings.

The buildings on the seven acres that Peery and Fields have now assembled include a big Ace Hardware store at 2555 E. Charleston, Charleston Business Center at 2525 E. Charleston, and a building occupied by Video Only, a consumer electronics retailer, at 2485 E. Charleston, county assessment documents show.

The most recent transaction was a $6.9 million purchase in late May of a parcel totaling 1.3 acres. Video Only sold the site where the retailer’s store is located.

Just days before that, also in May, a buying group led by Peery and Fields paid $24 million for 3.9 acres where the Ace Hardware store is located.

For some years, one of the Peery and Fields affiliates had already owned a parcel where Charleston Business Center, an office complex, is located. The assessed value of that 1.9-acre site is $9 million.

With the most recent purchases, the Peery and Fields affiliates own three contiguous parcels.

The properties, located in one of the most desirable markets in the Bay Area, are advantageous to the new owners in multiple ways.

The businesses operating on the properties are tenants that will provide the owners with a stream of rental income over a years-long period.

It’s also possible that at some point, the seven acres could be redeveloped as modern office buildings or new homes.

“The idea here is that you buy a property with good upside potential and with good income that is already in place, and if you choose to, you can take it through the entitlement process,” David Sandlin, an executive vice president with Colliers International, a commercial real estate firm, said during an interview in May regarding the purchase of the Ace Hardware site.