First look at Oakland's tech bait – the Sears building

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Courtesy of Lane Partners.

A preliminary rendering of Uptown Station, formerly the Sears building. The rendering's production is by Steelblue LLC and Gensler is the architect.

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Cory Weinberg

Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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I wrote last week about how the former Sears building's potential to lure a major technology to Oakland could change the city's economy. But here, for the first time, is what that building will actually look like.

Scott Smithers of Lane Partners – the Menlo Park-based company that bought the building in June and started $40 million renovation last month – unveiled the building's preliminary exterior design at the Business Times' Oakland Structures event Friday. Gensler, which opened an Oakland office earlier this year, is the architect.

Two big things you'll notice: more windows and a much more inviting ground-floor space, harkening back to the 85-year-old building's initial design. Dozens of windows had been covered to seismically retrofit the building after the 1989 earthquake to. ( Here's what the building looks like now and here's what it looked like in its original design.)

"It's exactly the look, feel and finishes that today's tech tenants are looking for," Smithers told me last month. "There'll be glass everywhere, from ground to floor for 25 feet. The amount of natural light will be unbelievable."

The 400,000-square-foot building, which sits on top of the 19th Street BART station, will also include ground-floor retail and restaurants that will be set up side-by-side in a "market-hall type concept."

Smithers said Friday that it isn't just tech companies touring the building and in deep talks to sign a lease. He said financial services companies could also bite. A tenant will likely be wrapped up by the spring, with a building opening date by early 2017.

"Definitely tech tenants are looking, but there's also financial institutions that are looking at it as well," Smithers said Friday. "There's a lot of tenants in San Francisco that have a lot of space and are scattered all over the place and have leases expiring in the next year or two. They'll see rents that will just knock their socks off."

Cory covers real estate and economic development.