Madison Capital buys Seagate Technology’s Fremont campus for $260M

Seagate Technology Holdings, an Ireland-based hard drive maker, sold its 31-acre Fremont research campus to New York-based Madison Capital for $260 million, a roughly 13 percent discount from its asking price.

Seagate, which listed the campus for $300 million in November, agreed with Madison to a lease to remain at least for the time being at the 575,000-square-foot property at 47488 Kato Road, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

Seagate said in a statement that “no changes to the work experience” would happen for its employees at the campus, the outlet said.

The move comes after Seagate announced its plans last fall to cut its global employee headcount by nearly 8 percent. 

The Fremont campus, just off Interstate 880, was built in 2010 for $300 million and once served as a Solyndra factory for solar arrays. Seagate paid $90.3 million for it in 2013 after Solyndra declared bankruptcy in 2011.

Seagate had sought $40 million more for the two-story, 31-acre campus — 11 of which are undeveloped — than it sold it for. 

In 2016, Seagate transformed the Fremont campus with a $200 million renovation, according to the marketing brochure. The property achieved LEED Gold status and features a “combination of high-quality clean rooms, laboratories, first-class office space, heavy power and robust MEP infrastructure.”

Seagate has been consolidating its Bay Area properties since before the pandemic, according to the Business Times. In 2017, it ended a decades-long presence in Scotts Valley and in 2019 it sold a 140,000-square-foot office building in Cupertino.

Madison Capital manages about $3.2 billion in assets, the Times said, citing Madison’s website.

It’s at least the second large office campus sale in California in recent months.

In April, Shubin Nadal Realty Investors and DRA Advisors sold an office campus in Northridge for $171 million — a roughly 30 percent discount from its listing price.

Pendulum Property Partners, an investment firm based in Orange County, bought the 761,000-square-foot The Mix at Harman campus at 8500 Balboa Boulevard for about $224 per square foot.

— Ted Glanzer