Duke Realty buys site of 428K sf Oakland project for $34M

Industrial REIT looking to redevelop former Owens-Brockway Glass Container plant, which closed more than a decade ago

Duke Realty’s Drew Hess and 3600 Alameda Avenue in Oakland (Googe Maps, Duke)
Duke Realty’s Drew Hess and 3600 Alameda Avenue in Oakland (Googe Maps, Duke)

Duke Realty’s Drew Hess and 3600 Alameda Avenue in Oakland (Googe Maps, Duke)

Duke Realty acquired the site of a shuttered glass factory in Oakland for about $34 million, giving the industrial REIT control of a property it’s looking to redevelop into a 428,000-square-foot warehouse with some offices.

The former Owens-Brockway Glass Container plant at 3600 Alameda Avenue, which closed more than a decade ago, has buildings with almost 1.2 million square feet, all of which would be demolished under Duke’s plans. The company’s acquisition of the approximately 24-acre site was recorded with the Alameda County Clerk-Recorder’s Office on Dec. 29, the Mercury News reported. The seller was Owens-Brockway Glass Container Inc.; CBRE was marketing the property for sale for an undisclosed price.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

Duke’s proposal, filed last November with Oakland’s planning department and now under city review, calls for combining 17 existing lots into two new lots and extending two roadways around the site to provide access. The company also proposes setting aside a half-acre piece of the property for retail uses, the Mercury News said.

If Duke’s project comes to fruition, it would create some breathing room in the supply-constrained East Bay industrial real estate market. Vacancy rates sat at 2.6 percent at the end of the third quarter of 2021, and almost three dozen companies were hunting for space in the East Bay during that three-month period, according to CBRE third-quarter data. That represented over 5.5 million square feet in volume, compared with 1.5 million square feet under construction, CBRE data show.

[The Mercury News] — Matthew Niksa