South Bay developer increases San Jose footprint

A major South Bay developer plans to add another huge office building near San Jose Mineta International Airport.

A nearly 300,000 square-foot, five-story office building is planned for a 4.5-acre lot at the west corner of Coleman and Aviation avenues. Hunter Partners, a development arm of Cupertino-based Hunter Properties, in partnership with billionaire John Fisher, who holds the majority ownership stake in the San Jose Earthquakes and Oakland Athletics, plan to construct the project.

City officials approved the project at a Wednesday planning director’s hearing with no discussion or public comment.

The approval marks the final city stamp on a series of projects from the partnership known as the Coleman Highline, which has already built several office and amenities buildings, parking structures and a hotel south of the airport and next to PayPal Park, the stadium for the Earthquakes.

The existing structures have big name tenants, including nearly 800,000 square feet of space leased to Roku across four offices. There’s about 660,000 square feet in an L-shaped building originally leased by Verizon, but is currently subleased to TikTok parent company ByteDance.

The latest proposal will bring the total development area of the Coleman Highline up to roughly 2 million square feet when complete, sources familiar with the project told San José Spotlight.

Initially, the developers envisioned moving the project along as fast as possible, and beginning construction in 2022 without a tenant lined up, Curtis Leigh, a principal at Hunter Partners, told San José Spotlight.

“With the market changing so drastically, we were not in any hurry to get our entitlement,” Leigh said.

He said it’s unclear when construction will begin.

“The plan would not be to start until we have a tenant or until the market gets considerably better,” he said.

The city’s site development permit approval is good for four years, and extensions can be approved by the city if requested by the developer.

Once started, construction is expected to take about 15 months, Leigh said.

Contact Joseph Geha at [email protected] or @josephgeha16 on Twitter.