The property that Pacific Shores Center was developed on had many uses through the years from part of the Redwood City Harbor Company to cement production to being part of saltworks with Leslie Salt. In the Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois bought of land adjacent to the Port of Redwood City and Westpoint Slough and formed the Pacific Shores Center Partnership to develop it. After many years of planning Redwood City and the partnership had a complete development agreement with plans for a land swap, that decreased the total property to, and public shore space to allow for public use of parts of the property. In Jay Paul Company entered into an agreement to buy the rights for the project by outbidding several other competing developers with a bid. By early 2000 with the buildings not even complete; Excite@Home, Phone.com, Informatica Corp, and BroadVision Inc. had all signed leases. Demand at the time caused rent prices to increase for the center as well. At this time there were plans for a ferry service to connect San Francisco and Alameda, California to an adjacent ferry terminal to mitigate traffic concerns at the time with so many of the expected workers to be projected commuting. By the burst of the Dot-com bubble had decreased demand for office space and the center previously estimated to fill completely was sitting with a vacancy rate of 65%. However fortunes changed and in late 2006 the campus was sold from Jay Paul to Starwood Capital Group for over for the center which had hit 90% capacity. Tenants at the time included Eidos Interactive, PDL BioPharma, DreamWorks Animation, Threshold Pharmaceutical, Openwave, Symantec, and engineering firm Rudolph and Sletten. The following year two of the buildings, specifically the ones PDL BioPharma was located within, were sold to Shorenstein Properties for an undisclosed sum, for the first time making Pacific Shores Center to have more than one owner. San Mateo County filed a lawsuit in August 2009 over a tax dispute with the Center. County officials claimed that the sale of property in 2006 never had the property transfer taxes paid while the Center argued over the county tax code. Starwood Capital ran into issues with overdue debt in and brought in Blackstone with an ownership stake. Starwood also sold off two of the buildings at the complex to Informatica for. In, Google bought the six buildings, over half the center, at of office space, which Starwood and Blackstone owned, for. Shortly after Google's purchase, Shorenstein Properties sold the two buildings they owned to DivcoWest Properties for about. This has left Pacific Shores Center with fragmented ownership to this day with the three owners all with different sections.
