Sobrato Office Tower is a 17-story,
class-A office building located at 488 Almaden Boulevard in
San Jose, California
San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
. It is the
fourth tallest building in the city. The building was completed in 2002 by the Sobrato Organization and remained unoccupied for nine years.
Sobrato sold the building for $135 million to
BEA Systems
BEA Systems, Inc. was a company that specialized in enterprise infrastructure software products which was wholly acquired by Oracle Corporation on April 29, 2008.
History
BEA began as a software company, founded in 1995 and headquartered in ...
in 2007, which was itself later purchased by the building's present owner,
Oracle
An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination.
Description
The word '' ...
.
Shortly after its headquarters moved to
Austin
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...
from
Redwood Shores
Redwood Shores is a waterfront community in Redwood City, California, along the western shore of San Francisco Bay on the San Francisco Peninsula in San Mateo County, California, San Mateo County. Redwood Shores is the home of several major techn ...
, in 2021,
Oracle
An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination.
Description
The word '' ...
sold off its
San Jose tower for $155 million, making a profit of nearly $20 million over the course of its 13 year ownership.
History
Since its $138.5 million assessment in 2007, the assessed value of the building has fallen to $57 million by 2011.
At different times, the City of San Jose,
Nvidia
Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
,
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
, and
BEA were each noted publicly to be negotiating to lease space in the building but none of those reported negotiations resulted in a tenancy.
Criticism of the building and possible reasons for its inability to attract tenants have often focused on its location being too far from downtown San Jose.
On November 17, 2010, it was announced that
PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting ...
would lease on eight floors (levels 10-17) of the tower beginning June 2011, thus leaving their 10 Almaden Boulevard location in San Jose.
[ ]
References
{{Reflist
External links
Sobrato Organization
Skyscraper office buildings in San Jose, California
Office buildings completed in 2002