Apple PHD

Retrofit and Reconfigure
San Jose, CA

Add Value Renovation – Retrofit and Lease to Apple

This project was a home run for Acquity and our investors:

• Start to finish less than 18 months
• Retrofit and reconfigure empty building – lease long term to Apple
• Equity Multiple of 5.04X
• IRR of 258%

This vacant former owner-user building was about to be widely marketed for sale. Through local broker relationships, Insight was able to do a direct deal with the seller before the property went to market.

Through proprietary market analysis, Acquity was able to determine that vacancy rates for this particular type of asset (single story, 100,000+ SF, high 25’ ceilings) in this particular market was below 3% and opportunistically bought the building from the owner before it was placed on the open market

A deficiency of the site was a low parking count (2.3 : 1,000) was to build a parking structure on-site. Insight’s innovative solution demolished 10,000 SF of building floor area to create additional surface parking and replaced the “lost” SF with useable, creative mezzanine within the 25’ clear height. This plan resulted in a parking count of 3.5:1,000 and simultaneously created funky/cool creative office space with no loss of rentable square feet.

Execution

In six (6) months, Acquity completed the parking expansion, design, extensive structural engineering, full DDs and CDs, building permit and a fully negotiated a GMP construction contract.

The newly configured building created a competitive bidding process with multiple potential tenants. Ultimately due to their long-term lease (12+ years) and exceptional credit, Acquity leased the building to Apple (NASDAQ:APPL). The project was then sold to an institutional buyer who won a competitive sale process.