$241M life sciences campus takes shape in West Berkeley
A San Mateo serious estate organization has started off work on a renovation job that marks the to start with piece of a $240.7 million prepare for a new everyday living sciences campus spread across two industrial blocks in West Berkeley.
Crews are operating to remodel a few buildings on the 2200 block of Fifth Road, between Bancroft Way and Allston Way, into what developer SteelWave phone calls “ultra-modern, amenity-loaded office, light-weight production and laboratory spaces.”
SteelWave is now trying to find metropolis approval to make a five-level, 415-area parking garage next door to the three renovated structures. Then the firm wants to remake the up coming block to the west by developing a new three-story analysis and growth facility at the corner of Bancroft Way and Fourth Avenue, renovating an current making on the Allston Way conclusion of the block, and introducing yet another parking area.
If every period of theLAB gets metropolis acceptance, by early 2024 approximately 600 staff members could do the job at the campus that handles just around 3 acres. Nine constructions now standing on the two blocks would be both demolished or moved to make space for the project — which include a 144-calendar year-previous household on Fifth Avenue.
Steve Dunn, who oversees Northern California authentic estate for SteelWave, stated the undertaking aims to attract on the lifestyle sciences talent pool at UC Berkeley, and permit East Bay employees who “otherwise would have commuted elsewhere” to stay nearer to residence. SteelWave strategies to lease house in the enhancement to multiple firms, Dunn explained, with two tenants, Bolt Threads and Conception Bio, signed on so significantly.
Berkeley Organizing and Improvement Director Jordan Klein stated the renovation stage of the task is proceeding soon after it obtained an administrative use allow, while the plans for demolition and new design will need a hearing ahead of the Zoning Changes Board, which has not however been scheduled.
SteelWave hopes to finish the renovation undertaking next thirty day period and achieve city approval for the rest of its programs in the summer time, then get started do the job on the parking garage and western block’s new structures this tumble.
The company, which describes alone as a “full-company inventive everyday living science, creative office environment, and industrial serious estate administration business,” owns quite a few homes all-around Northern and Southern California, as effectively as Seattle, Denver and other western towns. It obtained the West Berkeley web page in January 2021 and is pursuing four main lifestyle sciences assignments around the Bay Area, with two much more theLAB campuses prepared in Emeryville and Foster Town, additionally another growth in South San Francisco.
Various significant new lifetime science and biotech campuses are in the functions all around Aquatic Park in West Berkeley. SteelWave’s proposal joins the 462,000-sq.-foot Berkeley Commons venture at the north finish of the park that attained metropolis approval previous summer time, and a San Francisco developer’s options for a 187,000-sq.-foot job on the 700 block of Grayson Avenue. Berkeley leaders also authorised a new 30-12 months enhancement arrangement final yr with Bayer under which the pharmaceutical big could double the workforce at its nearby campus.
Mix of aged and new throughout campus
When SteelWave’s renovation task aims to generate sleek and present day services, the structures at 2246 and 2222 Fifth Avenue will maintain their exclusive concrete grid-form facades, a depth discovered on various West Berkeley buildings in which glass bricks build a latticework sample in the concrete.
“We’re attempting to manage some of the character of the place in the project,” Dunn claimed.
Those two properties, as well as a 3rd that sits in between them, would combine to supply virtually 90,000 square toes of area, with plans for a fitness center, outside mezzanine and other facilities to go together with the new get the job done spaces.
On the project’s west block, SteelWave’s programs place much more emphasis on the new: The company needs to demolish 5 industrial properties to make home for the campus’ most significant framework, the setting up at 787 Bancroft Way, which will offer 162,000 sq. feet of house.
Ideas for the parking garage on the east block are going through some resistance, even so.
Among the the 3 properties SteelWave is looking for approval to demolish to apparent area for the construction is a vacant Italianate Victorian house constructed in 1878 at 2212 Fifth St. To spare the residence from the wrecking ball, SteelWave is providing to market it for $1 to any buyer who can relocate it to one more web page in Berkeley. Dunn explained the business has not gotten any takers on the present, while.
Preservationists sought to have the house declared a landmark, arguing that it merits security as 1 of West Berkeley’s oldest structures and an “outstanding example” of the architectural fashion. Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Fee denied their ask for very last calendar year, even so, acquiring that the structure “adds no remarkable value to the West Berkeley community material.”
Many neighbors are also objecting to the parking garage, which would sit across the avenue from households and flats, stating they are fearful about the noise, traffic and air pollution brought about by hundreds of vehicles pouring into the neighborhood each individual day.
Dunn stated the enterprise has been keeping conferences with neighbors and is incorporating eco-friendly space on the facet of the garage that faces their residences to make the structure extra desirable. In its software products, SteelWave also wrote that it strategies to put into action approaches to lessen the selection of folks who push to the campus, this sort of as by necessitating tenants to offer subsidized transit passes to their workforce.
