Bridge Development Partners Breaks Ground on Bridge Point Oakland

Bridge Development Partners, LLC today announced it has broken ground on Bridge Point Oakland – a 534,208-square foot facility at 5441 International Boulevard in Oakland, Calif.

Once completed, the facility will be the single largest industrial development in the City of Oakland, and the largest industrial building delivered in 2021 in the Bay Area region. 

The 23-acre property was formerly home to a General Electric transformer manufacturing plant, which operated for approximately 70 years prior to being shut down in 2005.  As part of its redevelopment plans, BRIDGE will demolish the existing structure to make way for the new, state-of-the-art industrial building, which will incorporate notable features, including the original brick façade from the former structure into the building.

BRIDGE acquired the site in 2019, and worked collaboratively with the City of Oakland to obtain entitlements for the project via an Environmental Impact Report. Over the preceding year and prior to acquisition, BRIDGE worked extensively with the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) to achieve a site-specific Toxic Substances Control Act application that cleared the way for the development. In spite of the property sitting inactive for over 15 years due to the environmental concerns, BRIDGE’s vast experience in brownfield redevelopments paved the way for obtaining all necessary approvals through a challenging approval process. It also successfully obtained approval from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (“DTSC”) on a Remedial Action Plan that allowed it to begin the complex process of addressing the remediation of the property. BRIDGE additionally obtained a Bona Fide Prospective Purchaser agreement from the DTSC, further expediting the redevelopment of the site.

“We are tremendously excited to break ground on what will be the single largest industrial development in the Bay Area, and deliver a state-of-the-art industrial facility to the City of Oakland,” said Greg Woolway, Vice President, Acquisitions and Market Leader for BRIDGE in the Bay Area and Inland Empire. “While the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic created some unprecedented challenges, BRIDGE was able to successfully finalize the entitlement and remediation approval processes and get this project to a successful groundbreaking. This facility serves as a critical piece of infrastructure in a rapidly growing city and region that is in need of new industrial supply, and we are confident that our work will help attract high-quality users and jobs to the Bay Area in 2021.”  

The new facility, expected to be completed by Q3 2021, will be side-loaded with 36-foot clear ceiling heights, with a building depth of 335 feet. The truck court will be 185 feet in length, complete with 85 dock doors. The property has four points of access: three off of International Boulevard Avenue and one onto 12th Street.

The property is located in the desirable East Bay Area, exactly one mile from I-880 and two miles from I-580, and sits within a 15-minute drive of both the Port of Oakland and Oakland International Airport. The project site sits adjacent to San Leandro Street just north of the Oakland Coliseum complex, and is within a network of streets that allow for truck-transport of overweight 40-foot or larger containers. The site is also less than 30 minutes to Downtown San Francisco.

Kevin Hatcher, Robert Ferraro, and Austin Hinder with CBRE have been named as the exclusive listing team on the project.

Bridge Point Oakland is BRIDGE’s second development in the Bay Area, following on the successful groundbreaking earlier this year of Bridge Point Silicon Valley in Milpitas.  With both projects currently underway, BRIDGE has over 57 acres and 920,000 square feet of new development that will be delivered to the market by 2021.