SUNNYVALE — Pathline Park, a nature-oriented business complex in Sunnyvale, has begun to sprout as a modern Silicon Valley tech hub offering workers new ways to collaborate.
“This is the workplace of the future,” said Todd Arris, a senior vice president of Irvine Co., the storied real estate firm that is developing Pathline Park.
Irvine Co. has captured some early wins at Pathline Park through leasing deals with tech companies Synopsys and Proofpoint in a development that eventually will total 1.3 million square feet, about the size of a regional shopping mall.
“Tech companies want larger and efficient floors,” said Todd Hedrick, a regional vice president with Irvine. “Pathline has large open spaces” to offer tenants in its office buildings.
Pathline Park is rising on 42 acres in Peery Park, which was born in the 1970s as a series of one-story buildings built by famed developer Peery Arrillaga in Silicon Valley’s early years.
To be sure, those original buildings developed by Peery Arrillaga housed the operations of companies bearing some of the greatest names in corporate America. Today, though, the tilt-up buildings constructed in days long gone are too outdated to entice a modern workforce of tech-savvy milennials.
And that’s where Irvine’s vision for the new Pathline Park comes in. The park is designed to be more than a series of offices where people show up to work, craft digital services and apps, and then hop in a homeward-bound vehicle.
Located at and near the intersection of North Mary Avenue and Almanor Avenue, nearly adjacent to U.S. 101 and State Route 237, the development offers tech employees something of a refuge from the vehicle-choked freeways of the Bay Area.
Pathline Park’s name springs from a long pathway that meanders through the development past the project’s modern office buildings.
The pathline, with its numerous redwood and olive trees, is akin to a tiny bit of California’s outdoors sprinkled onto a business park in Silicon Valley.
“There will be a lot of outdoor collaborative and meeting spaces,” Arris said.
The tech park is already starting to fill up.
Synopsys has leased 360,000 square feet in three buildings. The company began moving into the first of the trio of office buildings in October. In early December, Synopsys held a festive event associated with a product launch, and several employees on hand for the event said they loved the new offices.
“This fresh and energized workspace provides a collaborative, productive, and community-based environment for our employees,” said Barbara Donaldson, vice president of real estate and facilities with Synopsys.
Proofpoint, a cybersecurity firm, has leased 242,000 square feet in the development.
Commercial real estate firms Cushman & Wakefield and CBRE are scouting for tenants for Pathline.
Irvine’s ambitious quest to replace an old business park dotted with aging buildings bears some similarity to the dramatic changes the developer ushered in with Santa Clara Square, a mixed-use village project of offices, retail, restaurants, and homes.
Before Irvine built Santa Clara Square near the interchange of U.S. Highway 101 and Bowers Avenue, the site consisted of decades-old manufacturing, research, and office buildings. The developer replaced those with modern buildings. Office tenants now include major tech players such as Amazon, Veritas, Ericsson, AMD, Hitachi, and Analog Devices.
A busy Whole Foods grocery store is one of the prominent anchor merchants. The residences are being filled up.
While Pathline Park in Sunnyvale is strictly an office development, the same sort of profound makeover seems to be well underway.
Irvine will “definitely” launch construction of the remaining office buildings on a speculative basis, that is, without attempting to secure tenants prior to construction, according to a representative for the developer.
The Synopsys and Proofpoint leases seem to justify that sort of confidence.
Irvine executives believe Pathline Park’s modern buildings, tree-dotted settings, a 19,000-square-foot amenities building with a full cafe, along with Pathline’s proximity to the Sunnyvale Caltrain Station and downtown Sunnyvale, can make the business complex a magnet for more tech companies.
“Tenants at Pathline are going to be able to come to a modern campus,” Arris said.
