Visa to sublease its 64K sf office building in Palo Alto

Move is part of strategy to consolidate credit card’s offices in Foster City

Visa's Alfred Kelley with 385 Sherman Avenue (Visa, Google Maps, Getty)
Visa's Alfred Kelley with 385 Sherman Avenue (Visa, Google Maps, Getty)

Visa is pulling out of Palo Alto, having listed its 64,000-square-foot offices for sublease.

The San Francisco-based credit card company wants a tenant to take the three-story office building at 385 Sherman Avenue in Evergreen Park, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported.

The move is part of a real estate strategy Visa unveiled in 2019 when it said it would lease 300,000 square feet for its global headquarters at San Francisco’s Mission Rock and redesign its Foster City campus.

The company then said it would close its Palo Alto office. The space is available through 2029, according to the listing, which didn’t give an asking rent.

Tucker Forbes, Luke Wilson and Phil Arnautou of Colliers hold the listing, which includes four homes in back totalling 4,400 square feet. A 1,600-square-foot balcony is leased for public art.

Visa leased the Palo Alto office in 2016 to allow 300 employees to focus on research and development. Rajat Taneja, Visa’s executive vice president of technology, said a Palo Alto office would help Visa recruit Silicon Valley tech workers.

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The company plans to relocate its Palo Alto employees to Foster City, where it owns roughly a million square feet, Visa has said.

Oakland developer The Minkoff Group built the office building at 385 Sherman in 2016. Two years later, it sold it to Los Angeles-based American Realty Advisors for $138 million.

The property’s value was likely boosted by the four residences Minkoff built into the back of the building, market observers told the Business Journal at the time. Minkoff included those units as part of a local density bonus program that allowed it to swap on-site homes for larger offices.

In April 2021, Visa CEO Alfred Kelly Jr. bought a lakefront home in North Palm Beach, Florida, for $7.9 million.

— Dana Bartholomew

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