SUNNYVALE — Hundreds of homes could replace a long-shuttered Orchard Supply Hardware store in Sunnyvale now that an East Coast real estate firm has bought the development site.
Purchased for about $44.3 million, Sunnyvale officials have already approved plans for 242 housing units at 777 Sunnyvale-Saratoga Rd., according to documents filed on Oct. 14 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office.
Birds-eye view of a 242-unit Sunnyvale housing development consisting of 162 apartments and 80 townhomes at 777 Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road in Sunnyvale, concept. (Studio T-Square)
At the corner of Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road and South Mathilda Avenue, the development would consist of 162 apartments and 80 townhomes, documents show. Valley Oak Partners filed the development application and steered the proposal through the city review process.
Related Articles
California real estate giant has new plan for apartments, with 12,000 units brewing statewide
State audit calls out UC, CSU student housing and says $89 million should not be used for SJSU’s Spartan Village
Grocer, ‘high-end’ restaurant sought for downtown San Jose housing towers
San Mateo County approves $41 million for affordable housing projects
Why this wealthy South Bay suburb is at the center of the next big fight over California housing
The timeline to build the project wasn’t immediately known. Plans on file with Sunnyvale officials show the housing would include a two-level garage and about 2,000 square feet of commercial spaces on the ground floor.
Florida-based Millrose Properties, acting through an affiliate, completed the purchase through an all-cash deal, county documents show. Mardit Properties sold the 5.2-acre development site.
While Millrose Properties now owns the site, the real estate firm might not wind up as the eventual owner and developer. Millrose Properties provides homebuilders with a reliable flow of capital to bolster their efforts to produce residential projects.
New Home Company Northern California, with an office in Roseville, has an option to buy the property from Millrose. The full terms of the option agreement weren’t disclosed in county files.
The project would bring about the demolition of the long-closed Orchard Supply Hardware store building that now occupies the site.
In 2018, Orchard Supply Hardware shut all of its stores, ending a storied history in the Bay Area and elsewhere that had begun in 1931 when it launched operations in a San Jose warehouse on Bassett Street as a farmer’s cooperative.
The wave of store closures unleashed sporadic efforts over the intervening years to engineer new uses for the empty properties.
A retailer, Outdoor Supply Hardware, took over some former Orchard Supply sites and opened new stores. Real estate developers bought some of the sites in other instances.
Google owns a high-profile former Orchard Supply Hardware store in downtown San Jose within the footprint of the company’s proposed transit-oriented neighborhood, which has yet to break ground.