SAN JOSE — Roku has signed a huge lease of nearly a half-million square feet to relocate its headquarters to a major campus in San Jose, a short distance from the city’s international airport, a regulatory filing on Friday disclosed.
The maker of digital media players leased 472,000 square feet in the Coleman Highline office and retail complex on Coleman Avenue in San Jose, according to an official company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Roku leased spaces in four different buildings in the complex, which is owned and is being developed by Hunter Properties. The lease was arranged through Newmark Knight Frank brokers Phil Mahoney, Jeffrey Rodgers and Andy Hueser and CBRE brokers Jeff Houston and Mike Benevento.
The company will relocate its headquarters from Los Gatos to north San Jose as a result of the transaction, a company official said. At present Roku occupies 200,000 square feet in Los Gatos.
“Roku is growing and doing well,” said Mahoney, a Newmark Knight Frank executive vice chairman who assisted Roku in its hunt for new headquarters.
Potentially, 2,300 Roku employees could work at the new offices in Coleman Highline, using standard calculations for amount of office space an employee typically needs. The space the company has leased in San Jose is well over twice as much as what it now occupies in Los Gatos.
San Jose has been on a winning streak this year in terms of attracting high-profile tech companies to the city from other municipalities in Silicon Valley.
8×8, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Bloom Energy and Micron Technology all struck deals in 2018 to relocate major operations to San Jose. Like Roku, 8×8, HPE and Bloom are all shifting their headquarters to San Jose. Idaho-based Micron Technology is moving large operations from Milpitas to San Jose, but is keeping its headquarters in Boise.
Tech companies also have intensified their interest in downtown San Jose.
Near the Diridon train station, Google is planning a transit-oriented community of office buildings, residences, shops, restaurants, parks, and other amenities such as a cultural loop and eco walk, all part of a project where 15,000 to 20,000 of the search giant’s employees could work.
Adobe Systems, a few blocks away, is laying plans for an office tower that would represent a dramatic expansion of its existing three-building headquarters campus in downtown San Jose.
In the most recent major coup for San Jose, Roku leased the entirety of two office buildings, one at 1167 Coleman and the other at 1173 Coleman, half of a third office building at 1155 Coleman and all of an amenities building at 1161 Coleman, the SEC documents show.
Plus, Roku is eyeing three other buldings in the project, depending on availability, the filing disclosed.
“We shall have a right of first offer to expand into (1) any space that becomes available in the remaining portion of Building 2, (2) that certain project building located at 1143 Coleman Ave. and (3) if constructed, that certain project building located at 1179 Coleman Ave.,” according to the regulatory documents.
The transaction also means the office buildings have all been leased by Roku well ahead of their completion. Between the 8×8 and Roku deals, Coleman Highline has quickly become one of the South Bay’s most successful office developments.
“Roku looked throughout the Valley before deciding on Coleman Highline,” Mahoney said. “This was the right solution for Roku in terms of future growth.”
