Twelve acres of grapevines at the corner of Chester and Allendale in Saratoga just changed hands for $109.7 million.
The buyer is Lennar Corporation — the national homebuilder — partnered with TPG. The seller is City Connect Companies, a San Jose entitlement and development firm that had purchased the same parcel in June 2025 for roughly $31 million.
That's a gross gain of about $79 million on a hold of roughly twelve months. And almost none of it came from the dirt itself. It came from a piece of paper.
What actually happened
The site is one of the last large flat, undeveloped parcels in Saratoga — approximately 11.6 acres, APN 397-01-071, at 14001 Chester Avenue. The Bellicitti family had owned it for more than a century and farmed it as a vineyard.
When the family decided to sell, City Connect's Thomas J. Wilson secured a purchase option in June 2023. His group then invoked California's builder's remedy — the state provision that lets developers bypass local zoning when a city hasn't met its state-assigned housing obligations — and proposed 231 units on the site: 24 single-family detached homes, 85 townhouses, 84 flats, and 38 ADUs.
Saratoga did not take it well. Neighbors organized, protest signs went up across town, and by Wilson's own account the campaign followed him to his home neighborhood in Willow Glen.
What happened next is the part worth studying. Rather than litigate it out, two neighbors — James Atwell and Bernie Mills — approached Wilson directly. A first meeting at a local Starbucks in late 2024 turned into a series of negotiations, and Wilson eventually agreed to a substantially smaller project: 64 homes total, consisting of 52 two-story single-family residences and 12 ADUs, six of them deed-restricted for very-low-income households and six for moderate-income households.
The developer entered into a memorandum of understanding with the City of Saratoga agreeing to withdraw the 231-unit builder's remedy application if the City approved the final map by May 6, 2026. The Planning Commission approved the alternative application in February. The City Council approved the final map — along with a Williamson Act cancellation — on May 6. The larger application was withdrawn 91 days later, as agreed.
City Connect closed the purchase from the Bellicittis in June 2025 at $31 million, and announced the sale to Lennar on July 3, 2026.
The number that matters for local owners
Look at the math on a per-unit basis. Roughly $109.7 million for 64 approved units works out to about $1.7 million per unit in land basis alone — before a single foundation is poured, before construction financing, before Lennar's margin.
Wilson has indicated the 52 single-family homes are likely to price around $4 million.
That spread tells you something important about the West Valley: entitlement risk, not land scarcity, is what's holding value back. The vineyard was worth $31 million as raw agricultural land with a general plan designation and a lot of unanswered questions. The same twelve acres, with an approved final map and a settled neighborhood, was worth three and a half times that to a public homebuilder.
Wilson was candid that he left money on the table by scaling down. In his words, the 231-unit number was much larger — but he chose the deal that could actually close.
Three takeaways for Saratoga and Los Gatos property owners
1. If you own land with development potential, your value is a range, not a number. The gap between "raw parcel" and "entitled parcel" in this market is enormous. The Bellicittis captured the low end of that range. That isn't a criticism — selling to an entitlement group transfers years of cost, risk, and public scrutiny to someone else, and many families are right to take it. But you should go in knowing what you're trading away.
2. Builder's remedy is a live pressure in the West Valley. Saratoga is state-mandated to plan for at least 1,700 new residential units by 2031. So long as cities are short of their housing element targets, developers have leverage that didn't exist five years ago — and adjacent property owners have less ability to stop a project than they may assume.
3. Neighborhood negotiation produced a better outcome than opposition would have. This is the underrated story. The Atwell–Mills approach converted a 231-unit builder's remedy project into 64 homes. Housing advocates see that as a loss — SV@Home's policy director called it a missed opportunity and pointed out that 167 potential homes, including more attainable townhome product, disappeared from the pipeline. Both things are true at once. Neighbors got the outcome they wanted; the region got less housing.
What comes next on the site
Lennar is expected to install utilities, pave streets, and build the homes, with construction beginning imminently. Essential Housing Asset Management — a land-banking entity tied to TPG Angelo Gordon — holds the land and is expected to release lots to Lennar as home sales are secured.
For nearby owners, a two-to-three-year construction window is coming. For buyers, 52 new-construction single-family homes in Saratoga is a meaningful supply event in a submarket where new inventory is close to nonexistent. It is also not the first Saratoga property with a winemaking history to trade recently — the 57.9-acre Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards site sold to the Saratoga Cemetery District for $20 million in August 2025.
Saratoga's agricultural chapter is closing. What replaces it is being decided parcel by parcel, and the numbers on this one are worth paying attention to.
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If you own land or a large parcel in Saratoga, Los Gatos, or the surrounding West Valley and want to understand what it's actually worth — as-is versus entitled — we're happy to walk through it with you.
