07/09/2013

St. Anton Partners' Valley Presence Grows With $40M Sunnyvale Apartment Project

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/07/09/40-million-apartment-project-grows.html?page=all

 

Four years after closing on its first Bay Area property, Sacramento-based multifamily developer St. Anton Partners now counts roughly 1,200 units in the Silicon Valley pipeline and another 1,000 in the broader Bay Area.

The latest to break ground: Anton 1101, a 97-unit infill project at 1101 North Fair Oaks Ave. in Sunnyvale that recently gained city approvals.

The $40 million project is located on 2.56 acres of former industrial land, and will consist of three- and four-story buildings with partially subterranean parking. Among other high-end amenities, St. Anton is promising an environmentally friendly development with a resort-style pool and spa, upscale clubhouse and business facilities, and yoga rooms.

It’s slated for completion in about 19 months, said St. Anton co-founder Steve Eggert. The project is the last “industrial to residential” rezone opportunity in the city’s North Fair Oaks district.

St. Anton’s ramped-up growth here is another example of the region’s attractiveness to apartment developers, who are drawn to the area’s strong rent and jobs growth. That’s most visible with the huge growth of the Irvine Company, which has developed several massive communities in North San Jose and has big plans in Santa Clara.

“It’s all about demand,” Eggert said. “We’re only a few miles away, and it’s a place where cities want to see more housing. So it was very much a natural for us and easy geographically.”

Builder diversifies

Founded in 1995, St. Anton Partners has developed nearly 7,000 apartments in California, and the company owns and manages all of them. St. Anton also owns and operates its own general contractor, Hurley Construction, which works exclusively on its projects.

Although St. Anton Partners is widely known for its work on affordable projects, it also is developing more market-rate projects such as Anton 1101, as well as blended developments that include up to 20 percent affordable.

That kind of flexibility is key to the company’s success, Eggert told me.

“We’re going to close five deals this year — one will be a traditional affordable deal, two will be 80/20 and two will be market rate,” he said.

Other South Bay projects in pipeline

St. Anton is currently under construction on La Moraga, a 275-unit project on the former Hitachi Global Storage Technologies campus in South San Jose. It is 80 percent market-rate and 20-percent affordable, and is about a year away from completion.

Two other Valley projects are in the development stage. St. Anton picked up a Menlo Park site on Haven Avenue that could see 394 units, with 12 percent affordable. And the company closed July 2 on 1111 Karlstad, a one-acre light-industrial site that will support a yet-to-be-determined number of units.

Despite the recent pickups, most of St. Anton’s future development sites in the region were picked up over the past five years and are only now going vertical as the economy has turned around, Eggert said.

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