Development firm Fulcrum is making a bet on future office demand, submitting a plan to the city of West Sacramento for a new five-story building in the city’s Bridge District.
Called Block 17, the 191,443-square-foot building would be an office and research-and-design site on the southeast corner of Fifth and Mill streets.
A representative for Sacramento-based Fulcrum did not answer further questions about the proposal by deadline. Fulcrum submitted the project for city design review, but the timing for development is not clear.
According to those plans, Block 17 would be U-shaped with an interior courtyard. A site plan shows the building would face toward a potential building of roughly similar size and shape, though no formal plans for that project have been submitted.
It’s not clear if Fulcrum’s project is being built on speculation, or for a specific tenant or tenants. The plans also list as an owner Blue Rise Ventures, an Alameda-based commercial real estate investment and development firm that specializes in life sciences and industrial projects, according to its website.
Blue Rise did not return a message left through its website seeking more information on its involvement in the West Sacramento project. The firm does not appear to have pursued a project in the Sacramento region previously.
Perkins & Will, of San Francisco, is the project architect.
At nearly 200,000 square feet, Block 17 would be the largest speculative office project in or near Sacramento’s urban core in more than a decade. The next closest in square footage would be Ice Blocks, about 180,000 square feet on the R Street Corridor in Sacramento, and an as-yet unoccupied office building of about 90,000 square feet by Bannon Investors Ltd. in South Natomas.
Because so many firms have moved to a hybrid work schedule that typically results in less need for office space, most observers expect there to be limited demand for new space.
But a location in West Sacramento would be 14 miles from the University of California Davis, where companies piggybacking on the university’s robust life science programs often lament the lack of nearby office space. It would also be 5 miles from Aggie Square, an innovation hub by UC Davis starting construction near Sacramento’s Oak Park neighborhood.
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