Basin Street buys 11 more buildings

Basin Street Properties, a major builder of the Telecom Valley cluster of startups in Petaluma around the dawn of the 21st century, has invested in that market with even greater vigor, buying 11 office buildings totaling more than a half-million square feet.

In the second-largest transaction in its four-decade history, the Reno-based real estate developer, investor and manager on Wednesday bought 568,722 square feet in three projects for an undisclosed price.

The properties were the remainder of the 14-building, 842,000-square-foot portfolio a joint venture of Napa-based PB&J Acquisitions and New York-based Investcorp International had purchased in February 2012 for $65 million.

The properties Basin Street just purchased are 87 percent leased to 24 companies, namely Amy’s Kitchen, Camelbak, The Gap’s Athleta brand headquarters, Calix Networks, Clover-Stornetta Farms and Wells Fargo.

“Petaluma is more active today than it has been in 16 years, from the late 1990s,” said Matt White, Basin Street Properties CEO.

That amount of tenant interest from within Petaluma as well as from San Francisco and elsewhere in the Bay Area, together with little new office space makes such deals attractive for investors, he said.

Basin Street now has a more than 4 million-square-foot portfolio of office, light-industrial, retail, multifamily and hospitality properties in the North Bay, Sacramento area and Reno, Nev. The company has become the largest office landlord in the “Biggest Little City in the World,” according to Mr. White.

The portfolio now is as much as twice the size as it was when Basin Street sold much of its office holdings - 1.4 million square feet in 44 buildings in Sonoma and Marin counties - for $263 million in 2005.

The company started reinvesting that money in purchases and projects in Sacramento and Reno then relocated its headquarters to the latter in 2009.

After selling at the high point in the office market, Basin Street returned to the North Bay at the depth of the market, starting in 2011 by re-acquiring eight Petaluma buildings it had sold in 2005 then buying back 17 Santa Rosa area buildings in 2012.

The latter was Basin Street’s largest single deal, Mr. White said.

Steve Leonard, Brian Foster and Trevor Buck of DTZ are marketing the new properties for Basin Street.