Ellis Partners Plans OK for Silicon Valley Office Redevelopment

Ellis Partners has plans to add nearly 300,000 square feet of office inventory to the popular Sunnyvale market.

The San Francisco-based firm won approval from the Sunnyvale City Council to tear down offices at 333-385 Moffett Park Drive for redevelopment, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported.

Ellis plans to tear down two office buildings spanning 87,000 square feet and build two six-story office buildings in their place.

The company bought the site, near Google’s Sunnyvale campus, in 2022 for $28 million. The development, dubbed Platform Moffett Park, will have 294,000 square feet of office and research space, 800 parking stalls, a shuttle bus stop and 43,000 square feet of private open space.

The developer said it expects to spend six to 12 months securing building permits and another two years on construction.

The firm furthered its push into Sunnyvale earlier this year with the purchase of Mathilda Tech Park. It acquired two buildings at 755 North Mathilda Avenue and 680 Vaqueros Avenue spanning 105,000 square feet across 5 acres. Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System sold the property for an undisclosed amount, but the Santa Clara County Clerk Recorder registered the sale at $15.5 million, the outlet reported.

Elsewhere in the South Bay, in August, Ellis Partners bought the three-building Campus at Scott office park in Santa Clara. In that deal, Ellis teamed up with Boston-based Baupost Group to buy the offices, which are largely occupied by Applied Materials, for an undisclosed price.

Sunnyvale’s office market has a higher occupancy rate than other Silicon Valley cities, though its vacancy rate is still up from its pre-pandemic single-digit vacancy rate.

Sunnyvale’s vacancy rate was 14.9 percent in the third quarter, below the wider Silicon Valley figure of 16.6 percent, per CBRE.

— Chris Malone Méndez