JLL announced that it has been exclusively retained to provide strategic advisory and brokerage services for Mare Island Maritime Campus, a transformational +/- 350-acre maritime industrial property with two million square feet of existing buildings and four operational dry docks. Located in Vallejo, Calif., the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard represents a generational opportunity as federal mandates and bipartisan legislation drive the largest maritime industrial mobilization since World War II.

JLL is advising The Nimitz Group, owner of the maritime industrial land and assets, on repositioning the property’s irreplaceable maritime infrastructure to accommodate surging demand for domestic ship and submarine manufacturing. The owner is pursuing flexible transaction structures, including leasing individual assets or entering into strategic partnerships with investors or tenants.

Established in 1854 as the first permanent U.S. Navy base on the West Coast, Mare Island operated continuously until 1996, employing over 40,000 workers at its wartime peak and building nuclear submarines throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The property is now privately controlled and positioned to meet surging demand for domestic shipbuilding capacity.

The campus features irreplaceable maritime infrastructure including four dry docks, three shipways, two miles of seawall, one mile of berthing, 30-foot channel depth with deepwater access and over 30 megawatts of available power capacity. The property includes significant development-ready land for expansion and modernization.

Mare Island’s strategic location provides access to Solano County’s highly skilled, ready workforce. Additionally, the site is positioned 60 miles from Silicon Valley, allowing operators to tap into the 20% of U.S. artificial intelligence talent located in the Bay Area. This makes Mare Island the only West Coast private shipyard with existing capacity and a workforce-ready ecosystem prepared to support immediate technology-enabled defense or commercial operations.

Greg Matter, who co-leads JLL’s Advanced Manufacturing Group; Matt Bracco, who co-leads JLL’s North Bay Industrial team; Kristi Childers with JLL’s Agency Leasing group; and Karlen Beitman with JLL’s Public Institutions’ Strategic Advisory team are leading the marketing and advisory efforts. Additionally, Peter Miscovich with JLL’s Consulting practice; Matt Do with JLL’s Government & Education Advisory practice; and Tom Taylor, who leads JLL’s Aerospace and Defense Work Dynamics practice, represent the key JLL advisory groups involved.

“This is existing infrastructure that simply cannot be replicated: four operational dry docks, deepwater access and workforce-ready facilities that were built once and are ready now for the maritime resurgence happening across the country,” Matter said.

The property can accommodate public-private partnerships, anchor tenant arrangements, build-to-suit configurations or acquisitions to support federal and commercial maritime objectives. JLL is actively engaging with shipbuilders, defense contractors, maritime operators and institutional investors seeking to participate in the expanding U.S. naval and commercial shipbuilding sector.

“What makes Mare Island truly irreplaceable is that this level of existing maritime infrastructure simply doesn’t exist anywhere else on the West Coast in private hands,” Beitman added. “At a time when the nation is prioritizing domestic shipbuilding capacity and naval expansion, Mare Island offers speed, scale, and strategic capability that would take decades and billions to recreate from scratch.”