A 74,000-square-foot industrial building in East San Jose that once churned out frozen organic pizzas for Amy's Kitchen has finally found a buyer, more than four years after the company abruptly shut the plant down and laid off 331 workers. Santa Clara County Recorder's Office records filed Wednesday show Lift Partners acquired the property at 1885 Las Plumas Ave., through an affiliate, for just under $18.4 million.
The sale closes a chapter for a site where Amy's Kitchen ceased operations in July 2022, according to The Mercury News. Amy's Kitchen had leased the building and opened its food production center there in March 2021, only to end operations there roughly 16 months later. In state WARN paperwork filed at the time, company executive Fred Scarpulla disclosed that the San Jose facility was losing approximately $1 million per month, driven by supply chain disruptions and sharp cost surges for key pizza ingredients, as reported by Food Dive.
A Plant Built Fast, Then Shuttered Fast
The building's brief life as an Amy's Kitchen facility left behind an unusually well-equipped shell. Devcon Construction completed significant food manufacturing improvements at the property in 2021, and commercial listings for the site describe 20 dock-high loading positions, ceiling heights between 23 and 26.5 feet, 3,000-amp electrical capacity, and specialized gas and water filtration systems, per Crexi listing data. The 5.8-acre parcel also includes significant surface parking, the same commercial disclosures show.
The plant's closure did not happen quietly. Prior to the shutdown, employees were actively organizing with UNITE HERE and Teamsters Local 665, which led to unfair labor practice complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board and public protests accusing the company of union busting, according to KQED. The following month, California's Cal/OSHA fined Amy's Kitchen $25,000 for 13 safety violations at its main Santa Rosa manufacturing plant, following worker complaints about line speeds and working conditions, the station reported.
Buyer Has Been on a Bay Area Buying Spree
Lift Partners, a San Francisco-based real estate investment firm, has been particularly active in Silicon Valley this year: in June, it paid $25.8 million for an about 7-acre heavy-industrial site at 651 Martin Ave. in Santa Clara, a parcel purchased from an affiliate of Vantage Data Centers that could accommodate data center, manufacturing, or warehouse operations, per figures stated by JLL and reported by The Real Deal.
That wasn't Lift Partners' first Bay Area repeat customer move, either. In December 2025, the firm closed a $31.8 million sale-leaseback deal for a 120,000-square-foot warehouse at 100 Utah Avenue in South San Francisco, buying it from Goodwill San Francisco Bay after having previously owned and sold that same facility, as Hoodline previously reported.
What Comes Next Is Unclear
The property at 1885 Las Plumas Ave. is zoned light industrial, permitting warehouses, wholesaling, and light manufacturing, and a special use permit could allow for other uses, The Mercury News reported. Lift Partners is contemplating a strategy for the site, but that strategy was not immediately known. Jacob Sanchez stated that the industrial asset underwent significant food manufacturing improvements in 2021 by Devcon Construction, according to the same report.
The acquisition lands in Silicon Valley's industrial market. For a building with food-manufacturing improvements sitting in that kind of market, the open question is whether Lift Partners leases it to another specialized food manufacturer or repositions it for broader logistics or light-industrial use.
Amy's Kitchen, founded in Petaluma in 1987 by Andy and Rachel Berliner, is a California-based organic-food company, according to IEN. The San Jose plant's rise and fall followed its March 2021 production start; Hoodline covered the facility's original opening. More recently, the company's founders remained associated with the company.
