SAN JOSE — Some high-profile companies are eyeing office space leases at Santana Row in San Jose — including deals that may trigger their exit from San Jose’s struggling downtown, several industry sources say.
PwC, a professional services giant officially known as PricewaterhouseCoopers International, is in discussions to lease three floors in One Santana West, a brand-new office building in San Jose across the street from Santana Row, commercial property experts say. The sources did not wish to be named because while they have close knowledge about the possible transaction, they are not authorized to discuss the leasing talks.
Separately, UBS Group has completed a leasing deal to relocate to an office building within Santana Row, agreeing to occupy 9,000 square feet of office space, according to real estate sources and a commercial property transaction database. That lease was signed in early 2023, the database shows.
The leasing efforts by PwC and UBS would have one result in common, besides enabling the companies to shift some Silicon Valley operations to Santana Row: Both companies would depart downtown San Jose.
UBS leased its office space at 535 Santana Row, the commercial property database shows.
PwC is interested in leasing three floors in the One Santana West office building at 3155 Olsen Drive next to Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, sources said.
The professional services and accounting titan could occupy somewhere in the vicinity of 130,000 square feet to 150,000 square feet in the One Santana West building.
One Santana West totals 376,000 square feet and has floors ranging in size from 36,000 square feet to 51,000 square feet, according to brokers with Newmark, a commercial real estate firm that is seeking tenants for the top-notch office building.
PwC was said by the commercial property sources to be also considering an office deal in downtown Sunnyvale along with the One Santana West transaction.
Either event would lead to the departure of PwC from its current location in an office tower at 488 South Almaden Boulevard in downtown San Jose.
Databricks, a software company, and Moss Adams, a professional services firm, also are in discussions regarding large office leases at One Santana West, the sources said.
The careers website for Databricks shows the tech company is seeking to hire workers in Mountain View and San Francisco. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Databricks would shift workers from those existing sites or if a deal at One Santana West would represent an expansion location for the software firm.
Moss Adams currently occupies office space in Campbell. It wasn’t clear whether a lease deal at One Santana West would result in a relocation.
Executives with Federal Realty Investment Trust, the principal owner and developer of Santana Row, didn’t respond to multiple requests to discuss the office leasing activity at the destination mixed-use retail, restaurant, residential, entertainment and hotel complex in San Jose.
The commercial property sources agreed that the various transactions that could occur at One Santana West have yet to be completed and there were no assurances that final leasing agreements would be accomplished.
However, during an early August conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss Federal Realty’s second-quarter financial results, a top executive with the real estate firm stated that leasing interest was brisk enough that one or more tenants could lease soon space in One Santana West.
“I’m pretty confident that we will have some leasing success in the relatively near future,” Donald Wood, Federal Realty’s chief executive officer, said during the conference call.
The tenant interest is arriving at a time when Silicon Valley has reached a “stabilization,” as Wood put it during the conference call, for the region’s economy and job market in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Maybe we are getting to some sort of period of time where things can start happening” in terms of tenants completing lease deals, Wood said.
As a result of the economic improvement in Silicon Valley, tenant interest in One Santana West appears heightened, according to Federal Realty executives.
“We are seeing more than our fair share of looks in the marketplace,” Jan Sweetnam, Federal Realty’s chief investment officer, said during the conference call.