Equity Office is putting 10 Almaden, one of downtown San Jose’s better office buildings — it’s the only one with an outdoor pool — up for sale.

San Francisco-based brokerage HFF is shopping the 16-story tower, highlighting stable cash flow from a diverse tenant base and low lease rollover over the next four years, according to an offering memo I reviewed.

The offering comes as quite a few of the downtown’s institutional investor-owned office towers have already sold in the last two years or so, following a years-long transaction drought. Since December 2012, 50 West San Fernando St., 225 W. Santa Clara St., 60 South Market, 303 Almaden and 160 W. Santa Clara have all traded hands.

EOP — a unit of Blackstone Group that has been in selloff mode throughout Silicon Valley— was also the seller in the 225 W. Santa Clara deal. That building, considered one of the top towers downtown, sold to Principal Real Estate Investors and Harvest Properties for about $138 million, or just north of $400 a square foot.
It’s unclear what kind of price 10 Almaden could fetch. It is older than 225 (which was built in 2001 while 10 Almaden was built in 1991). But the offering memo states that EOP has pumped $13 million since 2009 into renovations and tenant spaces. “Those upgrades significantly reduce the need for future capital outlays, and further solidify Ten Almaden as one of Downtown San Jose’s premier Class A trophy towers,” the memo states.

The building has landed some high-profile tenants of late, including Move.com, Apigee, Loring Ward and Turner Construction Co. Focus Business Bank is on the ground floor.
The property is 89 percent occupied, with current in-place rents averaging $2.74. The memo highlights potential upside as those rents expire and rents could be brought up to market.
It will be interesting to see what this asset sells for given some legitimate office-market momentum in downtown San Jose. This summer, one of the more obvious symbols of weakness in the market was vanquished as a pair of sizable tenant deals landed at River park Tower II, which had been vacant for years.