Sun Microsystems Selling 100-Acre Campus

Employees and operations on the Newark campus will relocate to other Bay Area-locations over the next six to 18 months, according to a company announcement. Sun's other Bay Area locations include its 816,000-sf headquarters campus in Santa Clara and a one-million-sf campus in Menlo Park.

The property will be marketed by Michael Leggett of locally based Cornish & Carey and Michel Seifer of Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle. The campaign will target potential users and institutional investors.

The 1.4 million sf is comprised of 1.2 million feet of office and R&D space in 10 buildings and a 220,000-sf manufacturing warehouse. The campus also includes rights to develop an additional 400,000 sf of R&D space.

"There continues to be substantial interest from institutional investors in Silicon Valley," Leggett says. "The continued growth of Google and Yahoo, together with the recent proliferation of activity from the health science, biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, has created diversification in markets that have been traditionally dominated by software and technology companies. This diversification appeals to institutional capital."

In February, Sun Micro hired JLL to handle the facilities management, occupancy planning and move management for its global property portfolio, which includes about 17 million sf of office, lab and manufacturing facilities in 44 countries worldwide. Three months prior to that, Sun hired JLL to manage transactions, leases and development projects.

Sun's 17-million-sf portfolio includes about 9.3 million sf of leased and 7.7 million sf of owned space, a source with Sun tells GlobeSt.com. The leased space includes 3.3 million sf in the Americas (including two million sf in the Bay Area; 2.6 million in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and 1.2 million sf in Asia. Much of the owned portfolio is located in the Silicon Valley, Denver and Boston areas).