Jay Paul Co. continues downtown San Jose buying spree

San Francisco developer Jay Paul Co.’s buying spree in downtown San Jose hasn’t yet slowed.

On Friday, the company spent $100 million on two slices of land at 200 Park Ave. and 282 S. Almaden Blvd. That marks its third major property purchase in the city’s downtown in less than a year. Jay Paul Co. is also working on purchasing a fourth building, known as 50 West or the KQED Building, within the next month, San José Spotlight confirmed last week.

Jay Paul was represented by longtime broker Phil Mahoney of Newmark Knight Frank in the recent deal, while CBRE’s Mark Schmidt represented property seller JP DiNapoli, which had already worked on plans for an office redevelopment on the site.

Mahoney told San José Spotlight Monday the proposal for the property will be significant.

“This will be a new icon for the downtown San Jose skyline,” he said. “There has never been a building like this built downtown.”

And while the sale Friday was largely expected by real estate insiders for months, it still marks an important move for Jay Paul Co.’s plans for San Jose’s growing downtown core, which are scaling rapidly with each purchase.

Buzz in the real estate community about Jay Paul Co.’s plans in downtown San Jose has grown nearly as loud as the excitement and concerns around Google’s planned 6 million- to 8 million-square-foot mixed-use campus not a mile away near the South Bay city’s transit hub, Diridon Station. That’s for good reason.

While Jay Paul may not have a name as internationally recognizable as Google, the notoriously secretive developer has a reputation for moving quickly and decisively once company leader and namesake, Jay Paul, makes a decision. It’s also known for its ability to attract some of the largest tech titans in the world, including Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, to its buildings.

Though Jay Paul entered the San Jose market less than a year ago, it’s already working on emptying out the existing 600,000-square-foot CityView Plaza office and retail campus, which sits directly across Park Avenue from its latest property purchase. The company plans to build a glassy, 3.4 million-square-foot office campus designed by architecture firm Gensler in place of the aging CityView Plaza campus.

The sheer size of that proposed development “tells you how large the forces are that are trying to come here,” Mark Ritchie, president of San Jose-based brokerage Ritchie Commercial, told San José Spotlight in an interview last week.

Representatives for Jay Paul did not immediately respond to a request for comment about plans for 200 Park Ave., but Matt Lituchy, Jay Paul Co.’s chief investment officer, told the Mercury News the company planned to incorporate the property in with its vision for CityView Plaza. The company will submit plans to the city later this summer, he said.

So far, Jay Paul Co. has spent nearly $430 million on real estate in downtown San Jose. Once its purchase of the 50 West building closes later this year, that number is set to shoot up to about $674 million.

“Gensler and Jay Paul Co have done a great job creating the workplace of the future, and all walking distance to multiple forms of public transportation and amenities,” Mahoney said. “It’ll be a new standard in Class A Towers.”

Contact Janice Bitters at [email protected] or follow @JaniceBitters on Twitter.