By Kate Snyder
On the site of the former Oracle campus that it purchased in 2021, BioMed Realty is planning a life science development that Belmont city records show would total approximately 850,000 square feet. The project is under review, city records show, and public hearing dates will be scheduled once the environmental review of the proposal is complete. Gensler is the architect for the project.
The proposed project is located on a nine-acre site that includes the addresses 300, 301 and 400 Island Parkway and 800 Clipper Drive, city records show. The site consists of fully vacant assets totaling about 229,000 square feet. The Island Parkway site is a 4.8-acre property at the southwest corner of Island Parkway and Concourse Drive, and the Clipper Drive site is a 1.8-acre property at the northwest corner of Concourse Drive and Clipper Drive. The 301 Island Parkway property is currently occupied by a multi-story office building and asphalt surface parking. Also included in the project is a 6.5-acre adjacent parcel of vacant land, which plans show is capable of supporting about 350,000 square feet of development.
The proposed project would consist of three buildings and a standalone parking garage, totaling about 850,000 square feet. Building One is proposed at 11 stories and approximately 208 feet tall, Building Two is proposed at nine stories and approximately 176 feet tall while Building Three is proposed at 13 stories and approximately 206 feet tall. Building Three would also include six levels of parking. The separate standalone parking garage features 14,800 square feet of amenity space and would include 11 levels of parking.
According to information from BioMed Realty, the in-process redevelopment includes spec-built labs that would be customized for early-stage companies looking for move-in ready space with plans to accommodate growth and expansion. Additional features of the campus include more than 15,000 square feet of amenity space, upgraded streetscapes and bike lanes, improvements to the adjacent Belmont Sports Complex parking lot and drop-off area, and more than 80 parking stalls that would be designated exclusively for public use.
On the project’s website, BioMed Realty argues that the proposed campus would fit in well as it’s situated in an established life science cluster in Belmont with 6.9 million square feet of life science assets in the mid-Peninsula submarket. The site is also in close proximity to El Camino Real, which offers a variety of retail, dining, hospitality and entertainment options.
BioMed Realty purchased the office complex plus adjacent land for a total of $160 million in 2021. The seller of the property was Oracle, according to The Registry’s previous reporting. BioMed paid $144.6 million, or about $631 per square foot, for the campus and $15.4 million for the adjacent 6.5 acres of land.
BioMed Realty is a Blackstone portfolio company and one of the largest–and most well-known–developers of life science and technology assets across the United States. According to the firm’s website, the company’s portfolio includes 15.9 million square feet of real estate in markets throughout the United States and United Kingdom, such as Boston/Cambridge, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Boulder and Cambridge, U.K. Currently, the company has roughly 3.8 million square feet of Class A properties in active construction.
The firm has a number of projects in development in the Bay Area.
In Emeryville, the Emery Yards project is slated to bring more than one million square feet of rentable office and lab space to the city. Located at 5300 Chiron Way, Emery Yards sits on the East Shore of the San Francisco Bay. Phase One includes a 285,000 square foot building suitable for lab and office space, which is available for leasing, as well as an amenity building of approximately 15,000 square feet. Overall, the project is slated to be completed in three phases, with both buildings fully developed by 2024.
The firm’s Gateway of the Pacific in South San Francisco is likewise a multi-phase, 1.5 million square foot life science lab campus located at 700 Gateway Blvd. The site was approved for redevelopment as part of an adopted master plan by the city in 2013, and BioMed began the construction of its campus in 2017.
