Maryknoll Residence in Los Altos Bought by Nicole Shanahan

An entity tied to Silicon Valley entrepreneur and onetime vice presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan is the new owner of a century-old residential complex in Los Altos.

Saint Therese Holdings, linked in state business records to Shanahan’s Bia-Echo Foundation, acquired the 29.2-acre site at 23000 Cristo Rey Drive for $43 million, Mercury News reported. The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America sold the 57-room property, known as the Maryknoll Residence, to the Bia-Echo affiliate in an all-cash deal.

The Maryknoll Residence was built in 1926 and was originally used as student housing for St. Joseph’s Seminary across the street. Half a century later, the residence was redesigned as a retirement home for the church, and the seminary closed permanently in 1991. Nearly all of the rooms have ensuite bathrooms, while the property features a commercial kitchen, multiple dining rooms, a chapel and sacristy, an assembly room, administrative offices, conference rooms, a barber shop, a woodworking shop and a maintenance shop, among other amenities.

Bia-Echo Foundation was founded by Shanahan in 2019, three years before her divorce from Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The organization seeks to “accelerate social change in order to establish a fair and equitable society for future generations to thrive,” it said upon its founding, according to the Mercury News. Engel & Völkers’ Gestalt Group Managing Director Robert Landsness, who represented the buyer, said his team was tasked with finding “a property capable of supporting a school for special education, with a faith-based element, all within a very specific radius in Silicon Valley,” Landsness said in a statement to The Real Deal.

It’s the latest campus with religious ties in Silicon Valley to trade hands. Last year, the University of California system announced the acquisition of Notre Dame de Namur University’s 46-acre campus in Belmont. The plan for the property for now is to lease it back to the private Catholic university for five years. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, church properties — some actual churches, some now converted into condominiums — have been selling at a rapid clip this spring.

— Chris Malone Méndez