In the midst of a national housing bust, the city of Dublin is preparing for a housing boom, with 4,000 approved units, and hundreds more proposed. Close to 800 of those units will be rental.

Unlike its neighbors Pleasanton, Livermore and San Ramon, where much of the available land has been built out, Dublin still has substantial areas prime for residential development.

“Single family seems to be very hot right now,” said Linda Maurer, Dublin’s economic development director. “The Tri-Valley offers great schools, great parks, great quality of life and very little single family is being built here. Other cities have less housing to offer than Dublin.”

The residential market for single family homes and condos is weak nationwide, but buyers have been snapping up new homes in Dublin.

Read more from Blanca Torres, San Francisco Business Times.

Tags: Dublin Updates, Newsroom by Tim Sbranti
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SunCal Cos. is close to finalizing a land exchange deal with the U.S. Army for 180 acres in Dublin known as Camp Parks.

The Irvine-based developer was selected two years ago through a request for proposals to build facilities for the Army in exchange for the land, which will likely become a residential neighborhood in the center of the East Bay city.

Joe Guerra, land acquisition manager for SunCal, said the developer plans to build six facilities on the base, which is used to train reservists.

The facilities include a medical training building, a training center for 600 people, public works facility and maintenance facilities as well as infrastructure improvements.

The construction will likely wrap up in 18 months, Guerra said, but the exchange deal for the 180 acres could close in the next two to three months. In the meantime, SunCal is ready to move forward on entitling the land with the City of Dublin.

The first step is to amend the city’s general plan, establish zoning and complete an environmental review. The city has already outlined a plan to build 1,600 units of housing, 200,000 square feet of retail, and 200,000 square feet of other commercial space such as office and hotel.

Guerra said all the approvals could be in place within two years.

Compared with some of its Tri-Valley neighbors, Dublin still has substantial space for new housing developments.

“Camp Parks bisects the city, so developing this area will bring together the east and west side of the city, where it would make sense to have a mix of housing types,” said Linda Maurer, Dublin’s economic development director.

The area slated for the private development sits near the interchange of Interstates 580 and 680 and is on relatively flat land. Another plus for SunCal, Guerra said, is the city’s support.

“The city staff, mayor and council want this developed,” he said. “At some level, that’s more important than the physical characteristics.”

Just a few weeks ago, SunCal was ousted as the master developer of Alameda Point, a former naval base in Alameda amid strong opposition from residents to the developer’s proposal.

The developer also has two stalled projects in the Bay Area at the site of the former Oak Knoll naval hospital in Oakland and a residential development in Bethel Island.

Both of those had been funded by Lehman Brothers, which declared bankruptcy in 2008. SunCal spokesman Joe Aguirre said those projects won’t move forward until Lehman’s bankruptcy proceedings conclude.

SunCal’s projects are each set up as independent business entities and do not influence each other, Guerra said.

Written by Blanca Torress, San Francisco Business Times.

Tags: Newsroom by Tim Sbranti
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Dublin-based software company Sybase has been officially acquired for $5.8 billion, but don’t expect its top brass to hand the keys to its new owner SAP AG anytime soon.

The banner on its website now says, “Sybase an SAP Company,” and its ticker symbol on the stock exchange is gone, but other than that it’s business as usual for Sybase.

There will be no layoffs as a result of the acquisition by the German-based software giant SAP, and, if anything, Sybase is expected to grow, according to Sybase CEO John Chen. On Thursday executives from both sides held a joint conference in which the word “independent company” was attached several times in describing Sybase.

“This is still a very fresh honeymoon period, but they’ve really gone out of their way to leave us alone,” Chen said a day earlier. “We are not going to look any different than what people are used to seeing. We are going to be the mobility headquarters of SAP.”

Sybase makes software that translates Web pages for viewing on a PDA or mobile phone and technology that allows a business to send data in real time to people in the field.

Typically, when mergers or acquisitions happen, it’s because another is weak and being taken over. Instead, SAP realizes the success Sybase is having, and feels there’s no reason to fix something that is not broken. With its quarterly financial numbers reported for the final time last month, Sybase finished with a string of 47 profitable quarters.”This is not your typical M&A move where we fold one into the other,” Bill McDermott, co-CEO of SAP, said on Thursday. “This is about growth and value and keeping things separate, so Sybase can run as a separate company under (Chen’s) leadership. This is not a control-and-command style acquisition.”

Today there are about 3,870 employees with Sybase worldwide with 615 Sybase employees at its headquarters in Dublin. Chen says if more hires are made, it doesn’t “necessarily mean” they’ll be in California.

At some point, Chen said there may be some operations from SAP’s Palo Alto offices merged into Sybase, but no details of what that might mean have been decided. Sybase will continue to have its own internal board of directors, and Chen said he plans to be added to SAP’s board at its next meeting.

“Right now we will all be doing exactly what we were doing before,” Chen said.

Under the hood, the one advantage of the buyout for both sides is that they will be able to leverage each other’s customer base. For example, 46 of the 50 top banking and financing companies in world work on a Sybase platform. And 4 billion mobile devices leverage its infrastructure, McDermott said.

Likewise, SAP has a larger footprint on the world stage, which allows Sybase to take its product to a broader market more quickly, said Raj Nathan, an executive vice president of Sybase.

Together, both sides plan to release a mobile platform for businesses within the next nine months to win new clients. The platform will be based on open standards that can be run on all main mobile operating systems and will be supported by all major mobile device types.

By David Morrill, Contra Costa Times.

Tags: Newsroom by Tim Sbranti
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