Whole Foods at center of $150 million Dublin retail project

By Jessica Saunders
East Bay Business Times
February 22, 2008

Whole Foods Market Inc. is the first tenant signed for Blake Hunt Ventures' reworked $150 million lifestyle center in Dublin, a planned 28-acre mix of retailers, restaurants and green space now called The Green on Park Place.

Whole Foods is expected to be the largest store in The Green, a 305,000-square-foot collection of shops and restaurants along Interstate 580 that doubled in size after Ikea dropped plans for a Dublin store in 2006.

Blake Hunt, planning a 140,155-square-foot shopping center next door, grabbed the chance to go bigger and bought 14.4 acres from the Swedish furniture megastore chain. The developer declined to provide the sale price, but Ikea paid $29.9 million for 27.4 acres in 2003, later selling 13 acres to Blake Hunt. Blake Hunt bought the remaining land last fall.

Blake Hunt and partner Stockbridge Capital Partners agreed to build a 50,000-square-foot store for Whole Foods within the lifestyle center at the southwest corner of Hacienda Drive and Martinelli Way. The store will anchor one end of the titular 900-foot, three-block-long green, which is surrounded by sidewalks and a circular one-way drive called Park Place, said Jerry Hunt, Blake Hunt co-founder and president.