Update on Sunnyvale Town Center & Onizuka Air Force Base

As I mentioned yesterday in my blog, we had two very informative speakers at the last Silicon Valley District CCIM meeting. Yesterday, I commented on Kara LaPierre's SVEDA presentation and I promised that I would talk about Connie Verceles' presentation today.

Connie Verceles is Economic Development Director for Sunnyvale. Connie provided an update on the changes going on within Sunnyvale. Specifically, she spoke about new Sunnyvale Town Center and Onizuka Air Force Base.

Sunnyvale Town Center is progressing nicely and they hope to have Phase I completed by Fall 2009. When the total project is completed, they are planning on over 1 million sf of retail, 200,000 sf of office and approximately 300 residential units in a huge mixed use development (shades of Santana Row). The layout of the Town Center is such that it will return a grid pattern to Downtown Sunnyvale.

One major change from the original plan was that the developers was granted the ability to rent half of the residential units for five years, so as not to flood the market. (If I remember correctly, Santana Row also did this during their development of their residential units and it seem to work out very well for them.)

Connie also touched on what was going on with the closure of Onizuka Air Force Base in 2011. They are looking at 1) Federal projects (since it is Federal land) 2) an Auto Mall and 3) High Density Office (Just what we need, more office space. Well, maybe things will pick up by 2012.) An interesting point was that it's only around 19 acres (I always thought that air force bases were larger).