North Bay Business Journal

Diana Brennan, who has worked in Sonoma Raceway media relations since 1999, was promoted from director to senior director of media and community relations. …

Altus Equity Group in Santa Rosa hired Kristy Brooks as operations manager. …

Kyle Young is the newest agent of commercial real estate brokerage Keegan & Coppin Company, Inc./ONCOR International’s Santa Rosa office….

Novato-based Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical, Inc., appointed Eric Yuen, MD, chief medical officer and senior vice president. …

Marla Carroll was named winemaker at Franciscan Estate Winery in St. Helena. …

Site preparation is set to begin in May for large shopping center and distribution warehouse projects in Petaluma and Fairfield: 346,000-square-foot Deer Creek Village and 791,000-square-foot Solano Logistics Center. …

Richard Coney, senior property manager in the Santa Rosa office of Keegan & Coppin, and Justin Barton, a property manager in the brokerage’s Larkspur office, earned the Certified Property Manager designation. …

The Santa Rosa office market continues to be challenging for property owners with vacancies. While higher than the doldrums of 2009–2010, tenant touring activity continues to be modest. Tenants still have the ability to take advantage of opportunities in the market to upgrade to higher quality space and in most cases are able to do so while lowering their occupancy expenses.

After being largely vacant from commercial property sales at the height of the economic recession, investors in North Bay multifamily complexes are moving back into the market.

Though the amount of office and industrial real estate available for lease remained at relatively high levels in 2012, the need for certain types of space could drive build-to-suit office projects in Sonoma County, distribution warehouses in Napa County and smaller office suites in large Marin County spaces.

Additional details for a Sept. 3 commercial real estate column item.

Seven years after making the largest single purchase of North Bay commercial real estate — 1.43 million square feet of mostly office space for $263 million — Equity Office Properties is marketing for sale all the properties it still retains in Marin and Sonoma Counties counties. …

As construction progresses toward July 2013 completion of the first part of the 380,000 square feet of retail and commercial space at the East Washington Place regional shopping center at the southwest intersection of East Washington Street and Highway 101, developer Regency Centers has signed a number of shop and junior-anchor leases. Target Corp. earlier this year purchased 10 acres for its 140,000-square-foot anchor store there. …

In the fourth quarter, U.S. gross national product has been revised upward to 2.8 percent — not great but better than the 2 percent GNP growth rates of the previous two quarters. Are we pulling out or falling back? What does either mean for the North Bay?

SANTA ROSA — The office market in the North Bay’s largest city appears to have stabilized as tour activity and closed transactions have increased substantially compared to 2008–2010 levels. Property owners continue to compete for tenants at rental rates 10 percent–20 percent below the market peak, but competition appears to be that of a more typical market rather landlord desperation seen in recent years.

PETALUMA — 2011 was a year of significant transactions in Petaluma’s commercial real estate landscape.

Civil Engineering Santa Rosa-based 15000 Inc.  hired Jacob Miller, a mechanical designer. Mr. Miller is a graduate of California State University, Chico and a current member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.  He has volunteered his time with the Marin Municipal Water District shadowing the engineering design, drafting, surveying, and construction inspection departments. Commercial [...]

Cornish & Carey Commercial Newmark Knight Frank agents Kevin Foster and Preston Smith in the Santa Rosa office and Brian Gleason in the Larkspur office were recently sanctioned by the worldwide network of brokerages as a specialty practice, called the Wine Services Group. The London-based Knight Frank part of the network already has such a group working with wine-related properties in Europe.

SANTA ROSA — Tektronix has leased a 10,042-square-foot space near the Sonoma County Airport for its Sonoma County design center, the company and Basin Street Properties announced today.

SANTA ROSA — Sutter Care at Home, which recently changed its name from Sutter VNA & Hospice, is relocating its Piner Road thrift store to a larger, more visible space in northwest Santa Rosa this month.

PETALUMA — After barely a year in the North Bay, Edgewood Partners Insurance Center will relocate from the Petaluma Marina Business Center to a larger space to accommodate its growth over the past year while establishing a permanent location at 5350 Old Redwood Highway.

SAN RAFAEL — A commercial real estate agent involved with a number of the major sales of office and industrial buildings in Petaluma for more than a year has moved to a new brokerage. Tony Sarno last week joined the eight-person Dowling-Bracco Team of Cushman & Wakefield of California. Mr. Sarno has been active in [...]

CLOVERDALE — A 40,000-square-foot plastics plant that Perler Beads, a toy company that started in a Santa Rosa garage, started closing in mid-June.

SONOMA — The U.S. distributor of one of the world’s largest winemaking supply companies is expanding to Petaluma.

Commercial real estate leases and sales in north San Francisco Bay area counties

PETALUMA — Novato-based bedding importer Natural Comfort Co. LLC has taken advantage of the rapidly changing Petaluma commercial real estate market to secure better-configured space for a growing company.