The companies: Aegis Realty Partners & Shorenstein Cos.
The deal: 555 City Center, Oakland

Deals come and deals go, but rarely do they return after they have left.

Ask Jeeves Inc. is the exception. High tech’s favorite butler returned to Oakland’s 555 City Center this summer after walking away in 2002 from a lease negotiated in 1999.

Although the search engine took about a third of its original commitment — 56,000 square feet rather than 159,000 square feet — its reduced floor space did not diminish the deal that called for two parties of a failed transaction to return to the table.

Glen Sunnergren, senior vice president for the company, and the man driving the deal to find space, said when he crossed the threshold at 555 City Center he understood why he wanted his company there five years ago.

Now he is convinced Oakland’s newest and classiest skyscraper is where Ask Jeeves belongs. Location played a significant role for the company’s 170 employees —especially proximity to BART — but so did image.

“This really signifies a huge turn around for the company,” he said in July. “It absolutely represents us maturing our business and growing up.”

John Dolby, leasing vice president for City Center’s developer, Shorenstein Co., described the deal as both fun and unique and said it’s rare for those involved in a transaction that went bust not to harbor hard feelings. But he genuinely liked the Ask Jeeves team and is thrilled that the second time was the charm.

The first time, however, was not pretty. Ask Jeeves was in the middle of a dot-com industry-wide melt down and spent $16 million to walk away from a lease valued at $80 million. To say Ask Jeeves left Shorenstein in the lurch is putting it lightly. Watching an anchor tenant walk away mere months before construction was complete on the 21- story skyscraper had to hurt, but Shorenstein aggressively marketed the gleaming 483,000-square-foot tower and today it is almost 90 percent full.

“It’s a great time to be a tenant of that size,” Matt Elmquist, Ask Jeeves’ broker and a principal with Aegis Realty Partners of Oakland, said in July. “They decided not to go to San Francisco because their roots are here.”

The return of Ask Jeeves is icing on a cake that includes such high-profile tenants as Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, IDG Game Pro, Matson Navigation, Washington Mutual, Clear Channel Outdoor, the law firm Meyers Nave and the federal Public Defender’s Office.

“This is a very corporate-image building and they are trying to establish a corporate image,” Dolby said. They’re not a brick and timber company any more. And the space is shell and can be built out to create what they want for themselves.”

For Ask Jeeves, the new address represents a coming-of-age for a firm that was founded in Berkeley, grew up in Emeryville and will mature in Oakland’s classiest and newest address.

BY KATHERINE CONRAD
Reach Conrad at Kconrad@bizjournals.com or 925-598-1427