After a decade of planning, AvalonBay Communities has sunk its shovels into the soil of a business park where it hopes to build a 305-unit apartment complex in Pleasanton.
The Virginia-based developer has started construction on the five-building complex at Hacienda Business Park’s Rosewood Commons at 4400-4460 Rosewood Drive, the San Francisco Business Times reported. It would replace an eastside parking lot.
AvalonBay acquired the 8.4-acre site in 2022 for $27 million. The seller was San Francisco-based Swift Real Estate Partners, which bought the site in 2014 as part of its purchase of the 60-acre Rosewood Commons, an eight-building, 775,000-square-foot office campus in the business park.
The property at the corner of Rosewood and Owens Drive was approved for a residential project in 2013.
The complex will include lower-density townhomes, garden-style apartment buildings and a large podium apartment building, of which 15 percent will be set aside as affordable.
The number of townhomes, expected to break ground next summer, was not disclosed. It’s not clear when the apartment complex known as Avalon Pleasanton will be completed.
The white, three-story apartments, designed by Oakland-based Pyatok Architecture, are trimmed in black and include many gables, according to a rendering.
“We’re really excited about it,” Joe Kirchofer, senior vice president for AvalonBay, told the Business Times. “We think the timing is great, and in prior cycles some of our most successful buildings started construction when very few other buildings were starting.
“Because we’re self-financed, we have a unique ability to proceed with projects that we believe in, even in times like this when market conditions are difficult. We think it’s definitely an advantage.”
The apartment project will join 10 other apartment buildings constructed inside the business park, totaling more than 2,300 units. Denver-based The True Life Companies wants to tear down 110,000 square feet of offices to build 146 homes across 16 buildings at 5776-5994 West Las Positas Boulevard.
Hacienda Business Park, which sits on 865 acres, includes 5.5 million square feet of Class A and B offices, 1.5 million square feet of “flex space,” 1 million square feet of shops and restaurants and 500,000 square feet of warehouses.
Read more
Residential
Los Angeles
AvalonBay and Abode hit funding shortfall for West LA Civic Center
Commercial
San Francisco
Nome Capital-led group pays $152M for office campus in Pleasanton
Residential
San Francisco
True Life plans to raze building in Pleasanton for 66 homes
James Paxson, general manager at Hacienda, said the business park came of age in the 1980s alongside other campuses in the East Bay such as Bishop Ranch, and has been planning mixed-use development since 2000.
“There’s been a lot of evolution in the thinking about workspaces, and creating things that are more interesting and active 24/7,” Paxson told the Business Times. “Looking at integrated development that looks at combining not just office, but having amenities and things like residential mixed into them — and embracing the whole mixed-use concept.”
— Dana Bartholomew