Toxic East Oakland foundry site draws interest from Duke Realty

AB&I closed after state attorney general sued over not telling neighbors about cancerous chemicals

AB&I Foundry (Google Maps)
AB&I Foundry (Google Maps)

Duke Realty, the Indianapolis developer that’s been on the march in the Bay Area, wants to replace a toxic East Oakland foundry with a Class A industrial building.

Duke submitted a pre-application this week for a 325,000-square-foot structure at 7825 San Leandro St., where AB&I Foundry said it would permanently close after Attorney General Rob Bonta sued it for not telling neighbors it was releasing carcinogenic chemicals, the San Francisco Business Times reported. Duke’s building on the 15-acre site would include 25,000 square feet of office space and 184 parking spaces.

The site is owned by McWane Inc., a Birmingham-based company that casts iron waterwork products. The company said a few weeks ago that it would close the foundry and relocate it to Texas, after Bonta said it was violating state law.

Duke wants to redevelop it into “a modern facility providing a high-quality industrial building.”

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Duke has several projects in the pipeline in the Bay Area, such as its 428,000-square-foot warehouse development at the site of the former Owens-Brockway Glass Container plant at 3600 Alameda Avenue. The company has also proposed a 303,000-square-foot site industrial project at 5853 Rue Ferrari in South San Jose, which is up for a city vote today, and a 282,000-square-foot industrial project at 5977 and 6001 Silver Creek Valley.

The company, through an affiliate, paid $60.5 million for a three-building tech campus on 14 acres near the Nimitz Freeway in Milpitas, more than a third the seller, Vertical Ventures, had previously paid. Duke also purchased a building at 2256 Junction Avenue in north San Jose, proposing a 305,800-square-foot project that would replace the 141,300-square-foot building on the 13.7-acre site.

[San Francisco Business Times] — Gabriel Poblete

UPDATE 3/30/2022, 5:54 p.m.: This story has been corrected to show that the foundry closed after being sued by the state’s attorney general.

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