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SF Business Times Awards Bay Meadows
Bay Meadows’ lease with SurveyMonkey was recently recognized by the San Francisco Business Times among its top Real Estate Deals of 2015. Below is the story from the publication’s special edition highlighting this year’s winners:
Bay Meadows bet pays off for developers as SurveyMonkey inks big Peninsula lease
by Sharon Simonson
When SurveyMonkey Inc. agreed in August to move its headquarters to San Mateo’s Bay Meadows, the company cast an important vote for the experiment in building urban-style tech campuses in the middle of the suburbs.
Bay Meadows owner Stockbridge Capital Group and developer Wilson Meany had taken a gamble by breaking ground in 2014 on Bay Meadows Station 4, a 210,000-square-foot, Class A office building, with no tenant signed.
The online software firm became the first corporate tenant for the 83-acre neighborhood. Bay Meadows 4 is the first of five proposed office buildings with a total of 780,000 square feet to be built steps from the Caltrain station. The developers began construction on a second office building with 174,000 square feet at the end of last year.
The deal positions other Bay Meadows office space as suitable for technology companies. It also validates the location as a viable competitor in the string of urban districts now emerging near Caltrain transit stations.
Keeping good talent and attracting more ranked first when the company set out to find “a new habitat,” Tim Maly, SurveyMonkey’s COO and CFO, said in an email. Good transit and available housing onsite were a big plus.
SurveyMonkey has about 400 Bay Area employees that it plans to move to San Mateo in early 2017.
The vibrant Bay Meadows Town Square will be the ideal gathering place with ground floor retail, outdoor dining, pop-ups and more. It will include a large sculpture as the focal point and will serve as an energetic and dynamic urban core with plenty to keep you occupied. Once Caltrain is electrified, the platform will be elevated and grade separations will be installed on 31st and 28th Avenues, which means the Town Square will be the perfect place to relax outside for a glass of wine or an ice cream after a day of shopping at Hillsdale Mall.