FREMONT — A huge East Bay commercial and industrial building where a furniture store once operated before closing its doors has been bought in a deal that offers a bright spot in a gloomy real estate market.
Prologis, acting through an affiliate, paid $59 million for a building at 5555 Auto Mall Parkway in Fremont, according to documents filed on June 16 with the Alameda County Recorder’s Office.
The building totals 177,000 square feet and is near the interchange of Interstate 880 and Auto Mall Parkway, county real estate records show.
Prologis has been busy buying and seeking to develop industrial, commercial and logistics sites in the Bay Area in recent years.
The most high-profile deal that Prologis has pulled off in recent years was the company’s purchase of the land beneath California’s Great America, a Santa Clara amusement park.
In 2022, Prologis paid $310 million for the land beneath the Santa Clara theme park.
California’s Great America appears to be taking steps to shorten its operating season ahead of a likely shutdown of the amusement hub in the coming years.
A formal development proposal for the amusement park complex in Santa Clara has yet to surface at City Hall.
Prologis has also gained final approval from city officials to develop a warehouse and industrial hub in San Jose at 2256 Junction Avenue.
An estimated 250 people could work in the proposed 276,000-square-foot building, once it’s complete. The precise timeline for construction of the San Jose building wasn’t immediately known.
As for the 5555 Auto Mall property in Fremont, LBA Realty sold the empty building to Prologis, according to the real estate records. LBA bought the building in 2016, paying $28.5 million at that time.
The building was occupied by Lifestyle Solutions, which operated a furniture warehouse store at the site. It wasn’t immediately clear how long the building had been vacant.
Synnex, a tech giant, was an occupant of the building prior to Lifestyle Solutions.
The purchase of the building by Prologis, one of the nation’s largest and most successful real estate firms, offers some hope for a dismal commercial real estate market in the Bay Area.
The $59 million that Prologis paid for the Fremont building is 78.2% higher than the property’s assessed value as of January 2024.
