NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL EVENT

Best Places to Work 2008 Awards Reception

September 25, 2008, 5:30-7:30 p.m., Doubletree Hotel, Rohnert Park

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Construction: Biagi gets OK for big Jackson Wine facility in American Canyon

Biagi Bros. Transportation & Warehousing of Napa received approvals from the American Canyon Planning Commission recently to build a 650,000-square-foot distribution center for Jackson Wine Estates on 36.5 acres north of Green Island Road.

Vintner Jess Jackson and his family own a number of large and small North Coast wineries and are looking to have a distribution hub connected to highways and railways.

Construction is set to start this fall. The distribution center is scheduled to be operational in October 2009.

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Best Development Group of Sacramento received approval for another small retail center in the North Bay – this time in American Canyon.

The firm wants to build a four-building, 29,000-square-foot center on a wedge of land at the intersection of American Canyon Road and Broadway. The nearly four-acre project, called The Shops at American Canyon, would have a 14,000-square-foot 24-hour Walgreens drugstore with drive-up pharmacy window, a nearly 3,000-square-foot El Pollo Loco restaurant and retail buildings of 7,700 and 3,900 square feet each.

Construction is expected to start this year and wrap next year.

Meanwhile, the second building at Best Development’s 27,000-square-foot, three-building Sonoma Gateway Shopping Center project at 6285 Commerce Blvd. in Rohnert Park was completed earlier this year, and the third is set for completion this fall. Best Development acquired the project from Radius Development Group of Larkspur.

Tenants at Sonoma Gateway include Bears Buddies & Toys, Patelco Credit Union, Mr. Chile, Del Secco’s Gelato ’n Sweets, Brooke Investments, Digicom Wireless and Chopstix.

Terranomics Retail Services is marketing both projects, and both were designed by Rauschenbach Marvelli Becker Architects of Sacramento.

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San Francisco-based Quorum Real Estate is investing more into its conversion of the 18,300-square-foot office building at 350 Ignacio Blvd. in the Pell Plaza development of Novato into commercial condominiums.

Quorum acquired the three-story property in January 2006 for $4.25 million and invested between $500,000 and $1 million in creating suites for sale.

Nearly 5,800 square feet remains in the building after four sales, according to Keegan & Coppin’s Theo Banks, who is marketing the project with Nathan Pollard. The largest and most recent sale was of 6,000 square feet by the owners of Marin County apartment management firm Professional Financial Investors Inc., one of the companies leaving one of the newly acquired Sutter Health buildings on Rowland Way.

Now Quorum is dividing and improving the remaining units further to accommodate the small tenants that dominate the Marin County market. Upgrades include kitchenettes in the available units, which start at 1,100 square feet. Asking prices start at nearly $400 a square foot. Quorum even is entertaining the possibility of leases at $2.25 a square foot full-service less janitorial but with a purchase option.

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Sebastopol may be getting closer to deciding on a 20-year plan for revitalizing the northeast area of the city, dominated by the once-bustling Barlow Co. apple processing plant.

The city council last week held another public hearing on the Northeast Area Specific Plan, which has been in works since the 6.3-acre plant closed five years ago, and recent revisions to environmental documents for the plan call for up to 300 dwellings and 391,000 square feet of commercial space.

One of the elements of the plan includes a variation of a SmartCode land-use policy. It calls for clustering of land-use types, pedestrian access and building heights, which Sebastopol has suggested could be as high as four stories in the northeast area.

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Submit items for this column to Jeff Quackenbush at 707-579-2900 ext. 206, jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or fax 707-579-8475.

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