A study by consultant firm McKinsey found that the average lifespan of companies listed in Standard & Poor’s 500 was less than 18 years in 2016–a steep drop since 1958, when it was 61 years. In short, McKinsey found that business longevity appears to be on the decline. But not for Hacienda, where Northern California’s largest mixed-use development continues to thrive 40 years after its groundbreaking ceremony.

Note to our Readers: Thank you for joining us on this journey as we celebrate our 40th Anniversary. The two stories we published do not begin to relate everything that has happened in the last four decades but do serve to illustrate an important point: Hacienda is as vital as ever; a testament to the amazing Pleasanton community who has helped nurture and grow Hacienda over the years. We hope you will enjoy this and other stories of our past and future as it unfolds.

Built for Business

After its initial assemblage by the original co-developers, Hacienda has become an aggregation of over 100 individual parcels held by a diverse group of owners and investors. Its success can be traced to thoughtful creators who strived from the outset to build a solid and sustainable framework for the future. Those creators–commercial real estate developer Joe Callahan; his partners, Mark Sweeny and Patrick O’Brien; and the Prudential Insurance Company of America–had a passion for supporting the business tenants that would call Hacienda home as well as the community in which it was located.

The development’s placement was chosen with care after a detailed analysis, for example, that indicated the intersection of highways 580 and 680 was the region’s most promising location for a business development. The analysis estimated that the average commute time to get to Hacienda from elsewhere in the Bay Area would be about 30 minutes. That gave future employees a reasonable commute time and future business tenants access to up to 40% of the regional labor. That access only increased over time as means to travel to and from Hacienda through improved commute and transit connections were developed.

“Over the years, Hacienda has functioned like an incubator of ideas for reducing congestion and improving the quality of life for local workers and residents,” noted  Bradley Berman in a Business Insider article published in 2013. “Working with the City of Pleasanton, it wrote the nation’s first transportation systems management ordinance in 1985. The development subsidizes public transit, making buses and shuttles free for locals.”

Critically, the location offered future and current tenants connections to important markets as well as labor. Hacienda’s position in Alameda County, at the center of the Bay Area, makes it part of one of the most strategic trade locations in the world, according to the Alameda County Transportation Commission. Alameda’s critical goods movement infrastructure includes the Port of Oakland and the Oakland International Airport, an extensive network of interstate freeways and arterial roads, and two major Class I railroads. That infrastructure makes the area a natural hub for goods movement to national and international markets as well as the Bay Area and Northern California.

A Rich Environment

Access to labor and markets was vital to Hacienda’s tenants but Callahan and Prudential also wanted to provide the kind of infrastructure, amenities, and services that made working there attractive. The development was built to host a robust business foundation by making sure that the components needed for business were amply available: telecommunications, power, transportation, water, and so forth. As times have changed, Hacienda has responded to the needs of its tenants. It was an early adopter of campus LED lighting to save energy, and has worked with tenants to add charging stations for electric vehicles as well as to develop clean energy generation. Early on, Hacienda created  numerous programs to help provide a wide array of commuting choices, along with customized tools that allow employees and residents to plan the best path of travel between home and work.

Other amenities were also important to the developers, who built the onsite Hacienda Child Development Center child care facility, for example, in 1986 after studying state-of-the-art designs and meeting with experts the world over. After a few years, HeadsUp! took over management of the center, which was the first of several child care, education, and support resources made available to employees and residents.

Similarly, Owens Plaza Park, Creekside Park, and Hacienda’s Linear Park have made it easy for employees and residents to enjoy outdoor activities in Pleasanton’s excellent weather. Sports facilities within the more than 12 acres of green space include a recently updated 18-station outdoor parcourse for walkers and joggers that covers a 2.3 mile circuit within Hacienda. These recreational amenities are a part of what makes Hacienda a great place for the community as well as for business.

Another part is Hacienda’s long-standing support for sustainable design principles. Before the City of Pleasanton adopted its green building ordinance in 2002, Hacienda worked cooperatively with the city to develop projects that featured green buildings and components. Today, sustainable design elements are incorporated into every new project. Every office building constructed complies with the US Green Building Council's LEED threshold standard and residential projects are designed to Build It Green standards. Whether through water conservation, commute assistance, energy reduction, waste diversion, or education, Hacienda has helped advance the best sustainability practices at every opportunity.

The quality of life for business tenants and employees mattered to the visionaries behind Hacienda. They viewed Hacienda’s success as a way to help the community thrive as well. To ensure the underlying components for a healthy business environment were present, and as part of addressing community expectations that Hacienda would fit within Pleasanton, the development invested more than $330 million in today’s dollars into the North Pleasanton Improvement District. The resulting upgrades, largely funded by Hacienda properties, greatly expanded the infrastructure not only in the North Pleasanton area but also throughout the entire community. They included new freeway interchanges, water and fire improvements, and work that reduced flood risks for a substantial part of the community. Moreover, unlike typical business developments, Hacienda agreed to both improve the development site and maintain many of the improvements found there essentially in perpetuity.

Cofounder O’Brien has many memories of the rainy Hacienda groundbreaking in 1982 and the people within the community who were key participants in Hacienda’s creation. O’Brien’s list of wonderful individuals who came into his life thanks to Hacienda is long. They include Ben Fernandez, Dagmar Fulton, Brad Hirst, Judge Bill Gale, Tony and Shirley Macchiano, Ken Mercer, and Dee Wilson. “Yes, Hacienda has been a great benefit to the community but the community has been a great benefit to me,” he says.

Both Hacienda and the City of Pleasanton have grown over the past 40 years. While there have been challenges as well as triumphs, the city and the development are well-positioned for the years ahead. “The project is thriving and for that I am grateful,” says Hacienda co-founder Sweeney in response to the anniversary. “There were so many contributors to making the park what it is today. Our development colleagues, the corporate users that made Hacienda their local address, Pleasanton city leaders and staff, and the citizens of Pleasanton all contributed greatly to the park's success.” This anniversary gives “me the opportunity to reflect on how important Hacienda has been and will be to Pleasanton's future.”

Remarkably, the elements that made Hacienda successful at the onset have remained instrumental over its 40 years. Life sciences companies today, for example, are drawn to Hacienda’s amenities and the highly educated workforce needed in that industry. The original benefits that Hacienda’s co-developers sought to embed in Hacienda are proving key in attracting tenants in this important and growing economic cluster.

Life science firms are far from the only type of company that has found this blend of amenities of value. Many companies have benefitted from these key characteristics as well as the well-rounded mix of tenants that support everyday working and living. Hacienda tenants offer a broad range of services and products, which further contributes to the quality of life for employees and residents.

Of course, change is a fact of life and of business. While no one can say what the future holds for Hacienda, the development is well-positioned to continue providing an ideal home for tenants and residents. It will also continue to support the community that made the development of Hacienda possible. After all, the relationship between the City of Pleasanton and Hacienda that began 40 years ago has only grown stronger with time.

“We are proud that Hacienda has called Pleasanton its home for the past forty years,” says Pleasanton Mayor Karla Brown. “As the largest master-planned development of its kind in Northern California, Hacienda has provided our community with world-class businesses complemented by premier residential living and a wide array of shopping and dining destinations. Its iconic arches welcome visitors and employees daily to a beautifully planned environment. On behalf of the Pleasanton City Council, I congratulate Hacienda on this milestone fortieth anniversary and look forward to many more years of success in Pleasanton.”

For more information about the history of Hacienda, please visit www.hacienda.org/location/project-overview/description/history, www.hacienda.org/news-events/hacienda-online/network/2002/august/august-haciendas-20th-anniversary, and www.hacienda.org/news-events/hacienda-online/network/2007/july/july-executive-profile-joe-callahan.