A prime piece of real estate in the River Park Corporate Center went on the market this week — the first time since the 1990s that land for development in one of Fresno’s premier office complexes has been available. Asking price for the trophy property: a cool $14.6 million.

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Owned by Los Gatos-based Granum Partners, the parcel is located at 20 River Park Place East and is currently leased to National University. The 4.78-acre property, including the 40,960-square-foot National University building, has room for an additional 20,000-square-foot structure, according to the listing broker, Brett Visintainer with Newmark Grubb Pearson Commercial.
“This is a very rare property in our market — and it comes with additional land to develop,” Visintainer said this week. “I have already had a lot of inquiries on the property and will know more about how the market will react to that price in the next few weeks based on if I have offers or not.”
Visintainer is using aerial footage shot by a drone to help market the property, which has a current cap rate, according to the broker, of 6.5 percent.
National University, the second-largest private, nonprofit institution of higher education in California and the 12th largest in the U.S., recently signed a five-year lease extension at River Park. Visintainer said the new lease runs through May 2021. “The new owner will have a great property and tenant,” he added.
The buyer will also have an option to build an additional two-story structure up to 20,000 square feet if National University vacates their building, the broker said.
The River Park Corporate Center is comprised of eight Class-A office buildings that encompass a total of 814,859 square feet.
The National University headquarters was a build-to-suit project completed for the nonprofit in 2000. The learning center, which includes 20 classrooms, was the first building to be erected in the prestigious River Park Corporate Center.
According to Dave Johnson, National University’s director of operations in Fresno, about 3,000 students a month utilize the facility for college-level courses. The majority of students, Johnson said, are studying nursing or are enrolled in the teacher education and credentialing program.
“A little over 80 percent of our total enrollment come from our teacher and nursing programs,” said Dr. Bernell Hirning, associate regional dean at National University.
Hirning emphasized the property’s sale will not impact the university’s operations in any way. “It’ll be business as usual,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”