Our Projects
Outstanding Additions to the Built Environment
Maximizing multiple values
We aim to make positive contributions to the built environment by undertaking attractive, well-designed, functional, environmentally sensitive projects. To enable our business to grow and support its objectives, we also aim to undertake projects that enable us to earn attractive returns and draw capital into much needed solutions.
Our projects are highly visible and long lasting reminders of our performance in communities that are important to us. They are key drivers of our reputation. As such, we aim to build the highest levels of value into our work: outstanding project concepts, architecture, and design; projects that are contextual and harmonious within their communities; projects created with high construction quality and materials selections. When we take on a project, it is our aim to always leave our project site and its environs a better place.
Projects Consistent with Our Ability to Perform
We only take on projects where we believe we can excel. Many are counting on us to perform: landowners, joint venture partners, neighbors, city officials, local financial institutions, the local building trades, and so forth. Having these constituencies supportive of our work over the long-term is key to our status as an aspirational partner in our markets of focus, the efficient conduct of business, and our firm values. When we take on any project, it is with a serious commitment to perform.
Our Project Types
Our approach to project types continues to evolve along with the markets we serve. In recent years, we have focused on single-family home “in-fill” projects. We believe this niche is consistent with our skills and has offered our firm the opportunity to deploy our capital with superior results. We also believe conditions that have made this niche attractive continue to persist.
We believe that our future project focuses will shift in an evolutionary way based on a number of themes. First among these is likely to be a greater mix of “vertical” or higher density residential projects. The persistent rise in Silicon Valley land prices represents a growing challenge to detached single-family homes as an efficient land use. Other important current themes include: (i) investment in real estate that relates to the current growth in communities proximate to rail links. These should be significant growth opportunities in Silicon Valley, accommodating its growth, facilitating mobility, and providing considerable environmental benefits; and, (ii) projects in like markets to Silicon Valley, but further from its core. At present moment, work-at-home and remote and lower cost work locations appear to be important trends.
Recent Projects
QUIMBY
Seven Home In-Fill Project
Quimby had classic values for us: its owner had started to entitle the project, but the work was incomplete; it was in San Jose, one of our markets of focus where we have meaningful experience, including with the City building and planning departments; we had extensive experience with product type; the product type – larger homes suitable for multi-generational housing – is an important need in our markets; we believed the project to have had both outstanding design and economic values; and; we believed the project site to be unusually attractive – it was located with outstanding views over Silicon Valley, and proximity to some of San Jose’s best schools. Quimby was completed in July of 2020.
HACIENDA
Six Home In-Fill Project
Hacienda was located in one of our favorite Silicon Valley residential markets: Campbell. While not as well known as Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, or Mountain View, Campbell is an outstanding community in the core of Silicon Valley, with close commutes to many of the major Silicon Valley employers. We bought the site from a family who had owned the land for some time with an intent to build a family compound. In our view, the site could be well optimized for six family homes suitable for multi-generational living and highly consistent with the demand for work-at-home residential that accelerated in the Covid environment. Homes at the site were of immediate high demand. The project was completed in the spring of 2021.
CAMINO
Transformation in Land Use Project
Camino was centrally located in Los Gatos, in the core of Silicon Valley, an approximate 10 minute drive from Netflix headquarters. The site we acquired had operated primarily as a garden nursery, which had fallen into disrepair. The owner of the property had sought to have the property redeveloped for some time, but had not successfully progressed the project prior to our involvement. We worked with the Los Gatos Planning Department to create an attractive and implementable redevelopment plan to transform the site into residential housing. We built a series of attractive single family homes consistent with design values of the neighborhood. The project was completed in the early spring of 2019.
