By Kate Snyder
California’s retail market has in recent years contended with the effects of the pandemic as well as changes and new trends in the industry. Still, property owners continue to test the strength in the market by placing retail assets up for sale. A retail property in Fremont has been listed on the market with an asking price of $27 million, or approximately $605 per square foot, according to a property listing from CBRE. The property consists of a 45,000 square foot building that is currently home to 24 Hour Fitness, which has a lease on the location through 2038.
The property owner is Cojama Capital Management, an entity associated with Lafayette-based Jason Andrew Hammesman. Property records show the firm has owned the site since 2013. CBRE’s Jay Gomez and Arthur Flores, both senior vice presidents at the firm, have the listing.
The property is located at 4500 Auto Mall Parkway and sits on 2.6 acres, according to the listing. It was built in 2001 and is centrally located in Fremont with access to Oakland and the East Bay as well as San Jose and the South Bay via Interstate 880. The site also has access to the Central Silicon Valley via the CA-84 Dumbarton Bridge.
With the changes that the retail market has gone through during and since the COVID-19 pandemic, some experts are predicting that this year will be more of a return to normal. El Warner, executive vice chair at Colliers’ Irvine office, recently discussed with The Registry the outlook on the retail market in California, and he emphasized his belief in the resilience of the retail market as well as the strength of the industry’s fundamentals.
According to CBRE’s San Francisco Bay Area Shopping Centers Figures Q4 2022 the Bay Area’s retail shopping center market exhibited some stability in 2022. The market vacancy rate has hovered in the low 5 percent range since mid-2021, and net absorption ended the quarter in positive territory at 256,842 square feet. Construction activity picked up slightly in the second half of 2022 but remained low by historical standards as developers continue to face record-high development costs and supply chain bottlenecks. Overall since the beginning of the pandemic, the Bay Area shopping center market has lost roughly 30,000 square feet of occupancy.
