Saratoga housing project advances with deal to buy development site
A major homebuilder has bought a moribund shopping center in Saratoga that's slated to become a housing development.
SARATOGA — A big-time homebuilder has bought a moribund Saratoga shopping center that’s slated to become a housing development.
Pulte Homes has bought Quito Village, paying $54.8 million for the retail complex, according to documents filed on Sept. 1 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office.
The seller was Sand Hill Property, a busy development firm that has been steering the proposed housing project through the city approval process. Sand Hill Property bought Quito Village in 2013 for an estimated $20.9 million.
The project consists of 90 residences that would replace Quito Village, which is located on Cox Avenue between Paseo Presada and Saratoga Avenue.
The Saratoga purchase marks the second time in a fortnight that Pulte Homes has bought a residential development site from one of Silicon Valley’s high-profile developers. Over an eight-day span, Pulte paid $106.8 million for the two properties.
Pulte paid $52 million for a five-acre site at 1139 Karlstad Ave. in Sunnyvale where development firm The Sobrato Organization had previously won city approval for a project with 135 residences, documents filed on Aug. 24 show.
In Saratoga, the Quito Village development was proposed in January 2022 by Sand Hill Property, which used SB 35 and the California density bonus law to streamline the municipal approval process, according to a post on the city’s website.
“Quito Village re-imagines a dying shopping center as a thriving mixed-use townhome community,” stated Dahlin Group, the designer of the project.
In recent years, the retail center has fallen on hard times. Quito Village’s decline intensified in 2017 when a high-end supermarket that was the center’s anchor tenant shut its doors.
“The project site has functioned as a shopping center for many decades,” Dahlin Group stated in the post about Quito Village on its website. “The center is over 50% vacant with a handful of remaining tenants.” These include some restaurants, personal services merchants, and a Starbucks coffee shop.
The proposed development would include units that would be both for sale as well as for rent. The development would consist of 17 buildings.
An estimated 10% of the 90 units would be affordable and made available to “very low-income households,” Dahlin Group stated on its website.
The project also would include a standalone commercial building totaling 5,000 square feet, the city plans show.
“Quito Village re-imagines this underutilized shopping center with a vision for a mixed-use townhome project with community-serving commercial uses, open space, parking, and connectivity to the surrounding neighborhood,” Dahlin Group said in its website post.