Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has signed a long-term lease for 141,000 square feet in Federal Realty Investment Trust’s Santana Row development, according to a Federal Realty press release.
PwC’s current 15-year lease in downtown San Jose expires in 2025 and the agreement allows the firm to move to One Santana West in 2026.
The deal ranks as one of the biggest long-term office leases signed in Silicon Valley so far this year. It is second only to TikTok’s sublease of 162,500 square feet from Roku in North San Jose. Unlike that deal, this was a direct lease, though Federal Realty declined to reveal the length, price per square foot or other terms.
A first-quarter 2024 Savills report put the office availability rate in Silicon Valley at 27.6 percent and Downtown San Jose at an even higher availability rate of 35.6 percent. Commercial property sources told the San Jose Mercury News that PwC would leave its Downtown San Jose offices when rumors of the deal surfaced last fall.
Monica Nayar, Office Managing Partner for PwC Silicon Valley, confirmed that the company would relocate from its current San Jose office and added that its San Francisco location would be unaffected. Between both leases, it now has 340,000 square feet in Bay Area office space, she said.
In 2010, PwC signed a 15-year lease for 209,000 square feet in its current San Jose location at 488 Almaden Boulevard. But it was only occupying 183,000 square feet when the 390,000-square-foot building last sold for $155 million in 2021, according to media reports at the time.
Nayar said PwC decided on a new location within San Jose as opposed to moving up the Peninsula because “Silicon Valley is the epicenter of technological innovation, and it is important for our firm to stay close to our clients and be able to connect with them where they are, as well as support our people’s experience when they need to be in the office.”
Federal Realty’s Chief Investment Officer Jan Sweetnam said that the building’s “world class amenities,” including a golf simulator, fitness center and outdoor terraces and gardens, offer “a culture to recruit, retain and engage top talent.”
“Santana West is a workplace where employees want to come into the office,” he said via email.
With the new lease, signed on March 27, the eight-story, 376,000-square-foot One Santana West development across the street from the Santana Row mixed-use neighborhood is now nearly 50 percent leased. Newmark is the agency for the project. In addition to the three floors taken by PwC, Acrisure announced that it would take half a floor, or nearly 30,000 square feet, at the end of last year. The fintech company plans to move in this spring.
The LEED Gold building’s modern concrete look includes floor plates up to 52,000 square feet with 13-foot clear ceiling heights and the raw space to be occupied by PwC will be customized to its requirements.
“The large floor plates and high ceilings provide ample room for flexibility in designing our new workspace,” Nayar said.
The company’s San Jose employees are “excited and eager” to move, she said. The new office’s “flexible seating choices and various spaces for moments of calmness and renewal” are particularly important for the company’s wellness focus. Its enhanced video and audio capabilities are also key in a world “where remote work and virtual meetings have become the norm.”
The building’s location in a “multi-use community” was another draw, she said, as it “offers our people a variety of options for both work and leisure, allowing us to foster a lively environment that encourages collaboration and creativity.”
The greater Santana Row development includes 100 shops and restaurants, more than 800 homes and a boutique hotel. It has more than 1 million square feet of office space. Other office tenants include Newmark, which arrived in 2018; Satellite Healthcare; and data analytics company Splunk.
Just before the pandemic, Splunk leased more than 500,000 square feet at 500 and 700 Santana Row, but gave up the latter building in 2021. Data storage company NetApp made the 300,000 square-foot-building its new headquarters that same year after selling its Sunnyvale campus for $365 million to Tishman Speyer. After leasing the entire 700,000-square-foot campus to Meta at the end of 2021, it sold the campus to CommonWealth Partners for more than $700 million the following year.
This story has been updated with comments from PwC.
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