SAN JOSE — An East Bay investor has bought the site of a former men’s bathhouse in San Jose for a price that suggests values remain feeble for many types of commercial properties.
The property, at 1010 The Alameda in San Jose, was bought for just under $2.5 million, documents filed on April 14 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office show.
In recent years, Briggs Development launched an extensive redevelopment of the property, a revamp that converted the former bathhouse into a small office building.
Narayan Group, a business entity headed up by Livermore resident and investor Sanjay Bhanvadia, is the new owner of the property.
An Arizona-based business group that paid $2.4 million for the converted office building a few months ago in September 2025 was the seller in the just-completed deal.
The latest transaction for the property is a reminder of the steep slide in office building values throughout the Bay Area.
In 2021, Briggs Development paid $4 million for the former bathhouse, which means the latest price is 37.5% less than what Briggs paid.
“This is an example of people buying commercial real estate at one-third its replacement value,” said Mark Ritchie, president of Ritchie Commercial, a San Jose-based real estate firm. “They believe this will pay off at these low prices.”
The nosedive in the site’s value suggests the property might suffer a decline in its assessed valuation. The plunge also has implications for local government agencies and the services they provide.
If real estate values falter in a community, the decline could imperil a crucial revenue stream from property taxes for cities, counties, regional agencies, and school districts.
The 1010 The Alameda building consists primarily of 10,900 square feet of office spaces that can be divided into as many as four office suites, according to a marketing brochure that Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate firm, had circulated.
The office property also features four breakout rooms, a courtyard and an outdoor seating area. Despite the significant upgrade of the property, it has remained empty since the bathhouse shut its doors in 2020.
The owners of the bathhouse, known as Watergarden, blamed the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic for the demise of the venue’s demise after 43 years of operation as a men’s health club.
“This is really now built only for office-type use after the conversion,” Ritchie said.