Silicon Valley megaproject gets new name, hires commercial listing brokers

The developer of Cupertino’s Vallco Town Center, one of Silicon Valley’s largest mixed-use projects, rebranded it as “The Rise” and hired commercial listing brokers, calling it a new era for a $4 billion development that’s been hampered by delays since it was approved more than three years ago.

Sand Hill Property aims to turn a former mall site it owns into about 2,400 homes, half of which would be affordable, almost 2 million square feet of offices or labs and a new shopping and entertainment district in Cupertino, a city of about 60,000 people where Apple is based and single-family homes sell for $3 million.

Designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects, the plans also include a 29-acre green roof, touted as the world’s largest, according to a Thursday news release.

The Palo Alto developer expects to start excavation of a 33-acre chunk of the 50-acre site in the next few months and hopes to start pouring foundations by the end of this year, Managing Director Reed Moulds said in an interview. If all goes well, the project will be rising above ground sometime next year, he said.

Its first phase — about 800 homes, most of its 429,000 square feet of room for shops, restaurants and entertainment tenants, and a “significant” chunk of its 40 acres of outdoor open areas — will be complete in 2025 and its retail portion will open the following year, Moulds said. The entire project costs $4 billion, he said.

The rebrand and start of commercial leasing efforts mark a new chapter for a project that was one of the first approved under California’s controversial Senate Bill 35. The state’s then-governor signed it into law in 2017 to fast-track the approval process for qualifying projects in cities that have fallen far behind on housing production goals.

A local community group sued Cupertino in 2019 over its approval of The Rise, saying it didn’t qualify under SB35. A judge dismissed that suit in 2020, allowing the project to move forward.

Sand Hill has hired Lockehouse Retail Group and Newmark to market The Rise’s retail, dining and entertainment component for lease and Cushman & Wakefield to handle office/lab leasing. It also opened a housing interest list where people can make inquiries, get information on the project’s unit mix and connect with a residential brokerage team.

“There will be housing options for all budgets, all incomes and all household compositions,” Moulds said. “Whether affordable or market-rate, whether they’re for workforce or for families, whether for-rent, for-sale, we’ll have a little bit of everything.”