Borelli Investment Company Wins “Land Deal of the Year” Award
Borelli cited for major transactions in Milpitas and San Jose in
San Jose Business Journal’s Structures supplement
San Jose, California, December 13, 2005 — Coming off a year in which Ralph Borelli and Borelli Investment Company handled seven land transactions worth $56 million to earn the Association of Silicon Valley Brokers (ASVB) Land Broker of the Year award, the question was: what would Borelli and his firm do for an encore?
- How about selling 50 acres of unused county land east of I-880 in Milpitas, in a transaction that will ultimately provide the county with an estimated $400 million from the sales proceeds and a long-term ground lease, and generate billions of dollars in tax revenue for the City of Milpitas?
- And how about the sale of the old Union Pacific maintenance yard off Williams Street near downtown San Jose, in a complex deal that involved a $7 million clean-up of the site to prepare it for the construction of a new home community?
Together, these transactions earned Borelli Investment Company the Land Deal of the Year award from the San Jose Business Journal, as announced recently in the newspaper’s Structures magazine supplement. As complicated as the transactions sound, they are not out-of-the-ordinary for Borelli Investment Company. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a typical land deal for Ralph Borelli and the respected real estate firm that his father founded 50 years ago is that these transactions are often the kind that other brokers hesitate to take on. Ralph is one of the few land brokers who has the experience and creativity to handle complex transactions that involve time-consuming entitlement work with city governments, or the ability to pull together multiple small pieces of land to create a larger parcel that makes sense for a developer.
“This is something that we’ve come to specialize in over time,” said Borelli, president and CEO of Borelli Investment Company. “ In Silicon Valley, there are very few large pieces of land that haven’t been developed yet. Most of the projects we handle involve in-fill locations, so we’ve gotten very good at those.”
Home Developments a Specialty Borelli Investment Company handles the majority of its land transactions for large homebuilders such as KB Home and Toll Brothers. The land deals that it brokers ultimately result in much-needed housing for residents in Silicon Valley and other parts of Northern California.
For example, in Milpitas, KB Home will build a community of approximately 800 single-family homes, townhomes, and condominiums on part of the property that was sold by Santa Clara County. The rest of the land will be leased to automobile dealerships. In downtown San Jose, the buyer was also KB Home, which will build 105 homes on the old Union Pacific Site.
But Borelli Investment Company doesn’t just broker land to residential builders. “We’ve put together transactions for shopping center developers, as well as traditional office and industrial development companies,” noted Borelli. “It’s simply that today, there is a tremendous demand for housing in Northern California, and the complexity of the deals—especially in Silicon Valley—plays to our strengths in repositioning property, obtaining government approvals, and working through complicated development issues.”
Borelli was presented the Land Deal of the Year award on October 27th in the rotunda of the new San Jose City Hall, at a dinner sponsored by the San Jose Business Journal and attended by hundreds of people from the real estate industry, who were there to honor the Structures winners. “This is quite an honor,” Borelli commented. “We look forward to continuing to work to put together these kinds of transactions for our clients as the opportunities arise.”
Borelli Investment Company is one of the oldest commercial real estate firms in the Santa Clara Valley. Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2005, the company provides a full range of commercial real estate services—from development and construction management to land sales, consulting for sales and leasing, and property management services. More information about Borelli Investment Company’s services may be obtained by calling (408) 453-4700 or visiting www.borelli.com.
Contact: Ralph Borelli, CEO Borelli Investment Company 1770 Technology Dr. San Jose, CA 95110 Ph: 408.453.4700 Fax: 408.453.4636 E-mail: ralph@borelli.com