McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. announced that it is opening a new Silicon Valley office, and also broke ground on a new $51.1 million transit center in San Joaquin County.

On March 21, the company joined the San Joaquin Regional Transit District (RTD) for a ceremonial ground breaking of the Regional Transportation Center (RTC), a facility officials say will greatly improve transit in San Joaquin County. The new RTC will replace an aging, overcrowded facility originally designed for a fleet of only 50 buses, less than half of the RTD’s current fleet.

The new depot will be a "critical driver of future economic growth,” said Tim Albiani, McCarthy’s project director in a new release.

Per RTD's request, the design-build project will be built with local San Joaquin County and Stockton labor, something that McCarthy is no stranger to. The company also constructed the Kaiser Stockton Medical Center that completed in 1990, and the California Health Care Facility, a 1.2-million-sq-ft medical detention facility in Stockton, as a joint venture with Clark Construction Group, which finished last year.

The new RTC facility, scheduled to complete in late 2015, will feature a Fuel and Wash Building that will also support brake and tire repair for the 60-ft-long articulated buses.

The project is funded by the Federal Transit Administration, Measure K (the half-cent sales tax dedicated to transportation projects in San Joaquin County), and the State of California Proposition 1B Program.

A few miles south McCarthy is also opening a new Silicon Valley office, effective May 15. Located on North First Street in San Jose, the office will offer greater accessibility to McCarthy’s Peninsula and South Bay clients, such as Stanford University and the Irvine Company, and strategically position the company in one of the country’s fastest-growing and most economically vibrant regions. 

Paul Erb, who has directed many of McCarthy’s marquee projects throughout the Bay Area, was promoted to vice president of San Jose operations and will lead the office.

Rich Henry, McCarthy’s Northern Pacific Division president, says the Silicon Valley is one of the most exciting construction markets in the state. He said McCarthy sees potential to contribute to the area's expansion in the fields of healthcare, high-technology, research and development, laboratories, corporate office, parking structures, educational, correctional, and municipal facilities.

McCarthy has recently delivered more than $1 billion worth of construction projects to the Peninsula and South Bay regions, including the Santa Clara Valley Medical Specialty Center in San Jose, Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System Mental Health Center, College of San Mateo Integrated Science Center and Planetarium, Maxim Headquarters in Sunnyvale, and the Nadev Printing Facility in Fremont.

The company is currently working with a market-leading technology client in the Silicon Valley area on its high-profile campus project worth $150 million; constructing a new parking structure for The Irvine Company in Santa Clara; heading up efforts on a laboratory renovation and two new student housing facilities worth $50 million on the Stanford University campus; and, in a joint venture with Clark Construction, building the Stanford University Medical Center’s new Adult Hospital.

Erb, a 15-year construction industry veteran, previously served as project executive for projects throughout Northern California for clients such as Stanford University, Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley.