Another Bay Area software company is jumping aboard the growing Bay Meadows transit-oriented development by opting to move its corporate headquarters to San Mateo’s newest community along the Caltrain tracks.
Guidewire Software signed a direct lease for 189,000 square feet of brand-new office space at 2850 S. Delaware St., according to the real estate research firm Colliers International.
The company will take over Station 2, one of five Class A office buildings slated to line the tracks at the redevelopment of the former horse race track. The building is currently under construction and scheduled to be ready for occupancy in December. The agreement marks another example of how Bay Meadows is attracting a flurry of tech tenants to its mixed-use housing, retail and commercial development.
Guidewire is currently located at 1001 E. Hillsdale Blvd. in Foster City, and has various office locales across the United States, according to its website. The publicly-traded software company specializes in technology platforms for insurance companies and reported $322.7 million in gross profit in fiscal year 2017, according to its website.
A company spokesperson did not return a request for comment and Bay Meadows representatives declined to speak as well.
Guidewire will become the second largest commercial tenant to sign on to Phase 2, which is slated to offer 780,000 square feet of office space across five buildings. SurveyMonkey was the first to join and signed a lease in 2015 for the 200,000-square-foot Station 4, which it now occupies with TenX and Zuora. OpenText, another tech company, leased two floors of the neighboring Station 3, according to Bay Meadows.
Master developer Wilson Meany and Stockbridge Capital are spurring the 83-acre Phase 2 that includes the Town Square “social hub” that’s attracted retail tenants such as Blue Bottle Coffee, Tin Pot Creamery and Fieldwork Brewing Company’s outdoor beer garden.
“With top companies and coveted retailers locating here and Bay Meadows’ for-sale homes and rentals filling up, it’s clear our urban village is satisfying a great need in the region: a vibrant place to live, work and enjoy life,” Wilson Meany Partner Janice Thacher said in a press release announcing the May 2017 groundbreaking of Station 2.
The developer markets the site as a walkable, transit-oriented community with a variety of amenities for residents and employees.
When complete, Phase 2 will include about 1,100 housing units, 93,000 square feet of retail space, 18 acres of parks and open space and a private high school. The first phase of the transformation of total 160-acre former horse racing track site included the city’s new police station, Franklin Templeton Investments’ headquarters, the Kaiser Permanente Medical Offices and a Whole Foods Market.
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While construction is underway at Bay Meadows, Caltrain is also in the midst of a massive project to raise the tracks above grade at 25th, 28th and 31st avenues, as well as relocate the Hillsdale Caltrain station a few blocks to the north.
The long-planned transit-oriented development is centrally located in Silicon Valley and sandwiched between Highway 101 and the Caltrain tracks. The site is considered about 65 percent complete and was entitled as part of the master planning process.
However, Wilson Meany recently submitted a proposal to increase the amount of office space at stations 1 and 5. Those two smaller office buildings were slated for about 95,000 square feet of new development each. But the developer now seeks to nearly double the square footage and reduce previously approved ground-floor retail space, according to plans submitted with the city.
Wilson Meany representatives said their proposal would still be under the 1.25 million square feet of office space originally entitled at Bay Meadows.
But a number of residents in surrounding neighborhoods have already begun to raise concerns about the proposal. Some expressed frustration as they feel squeezed by an influx of development that’s affecting parking, traffic and other quality of life issues.
A community meeting was held in November and the proposal is still being reviewed by city staff before a formal public hearing is scheduled. With only a portion of the planned office space complete and occupied, it’s unclear how the proposal to expand the development will fare with the community and city officials.
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(7) comments
Bay Meadows has already been gentrified and all these companies that have offices in Bay Meadows should only hire people from SM county, and not just from silicon valley. We need to keep the balance of housing in SM and these jobs available. These tech companies have to hire more people in closer distance, if they really want to minimize traffic, as they claimed.
San Mateo has a 1:1 jobs:housing ratio. It might even be lower now, after all the housing that has been built recently. We need more office space in San Mateo to balance out all of the new the housing.
The traffic jams are being caused by other cities with huge imbalances, like SF and Palo Alto, where the ratio is 4:1 or more.
I wish if the SM Daily Journal, would present some data to support the idea that these huge office developments will use Caltrain.......... The fact is that ridership was actually down for 2016-2017 at 19 of the 29 stations.........BUT instead, both the Bay Meadows/TOD articles found herein, as well as the developers PR teams, keep touting the train to get their City approvals... as if people aren't using their cars and that somehow a large percentage of the TOD residents use the train.....Fact is that the City's Transit Management Authority (TMA) that is supposed to give annual updates and guidance on the success of TOD, is made up 100% of developers and there is no data on Caltrain usage in those TMA annual reports...I just wish that the SMDJ would ask to see proof of the fact that the TOD, and office developments like this, are, in fact, using the train to a large extent...instead of continually publishing what are basically promotional pieces for the developers that constantly allude to the unproven premise "next to the train track"....."along the train tracks" , "transit oriented development"...cliche's and rhetoric that are used in these articles...FINAL note, any negative comment about overbuilt office development in San Mateo, by residents, is limited to two short paragraphs at the end of the article...WHAT"S up with that..?
San Mateo NIMBY's complain about every plan to build new housing, but they don't gripe at all about adding more office space. Where do the NIMBY's think the people who work in those offices are supposed to live? If you don't want more housing you first need to oppose the construction of office buildings. There is now a severe imbalance between jobs and housing in our area.
Really Tom...I don't know where you got that notion from. Most residents I've heard of have complained about the imbalance and the overbuilding of office space in San Mateo for a number of years now...Maybe instead of trying to blame the existing residents fhe imbalance...you should direct your complaints to our City Hall, along with the developers, who have been complicit in creating this imbalance, by approving all of the office space that has been built in San Mateo over the past few years.
Vincent: I read comments in the media and have attended planning meetings. I have noticed much more vocal opposition to housing than to office space.
Newsflash, Vincent: the City Council is elected by the people of San Mateo. Stop trying to blame the Council and developers, and take a good hard look in the mirror.
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