In 2020, Longfellow Real Estate Partners acquired The Foundry, a 280,365-square-foot office campus in San Diego. Now, one year later, the Boston-based real estate investment company is carrying on with plans to convert the campus into life science space.
“By bringing this development to market, which was recently rebranded as Biovista, it allows Longfellow to build upon our existing San Diego portfolio with state-of-the-art lab space for companies across the life sciences ecosystem, from multi-tenant spaces to multi-floor options. The Class A lab space here will be offered in a unique vertical setting that provides sprawling views and will offer tenants a significantly enhanced site and amenity package,” Longfellow Managing Director Nick Frasco said.
The office campus consists of two six-story buildings, located at 9276 and 9330 Scranton Road in San Diego’s Sorrento Mesa submarket. The buildings were sold to Longfellow by Shorenstein Properties for an undisclosed amount.
Now, under Longfellow’s direction, the office campus is undergoing a complete conversion to create lab space throughout.
“With 25,000-square-foot floor plates and multiple floors, the campus will support the broad spectrum of life science innovators,” Frasco said.
The first phase of the project is anticipated to be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2021, when an initial 60,000 square feet of lab space will be delivered. In total, however, Longfellow anticipated the full conversion to be completed over a period of five years.
The project site is located in San Diego’s Sorrento Mesa submarket, home to many biotech companies, technology companies and research institutions. In the immediate vicinity of the lab conversion project, some of these companies include Qualcomm, Sorrento Therapeutics, Aya Healthcare, Apple, Amazon, Lilly Biotech as well as many others. The site is also near Interstates 805 and 5, providing direct access to downtown San Diego, which is approximately 17 miles south of the property.
The lab conversion project is just one of several in San Diego that Longfellow has undertaken in the last several years. In addition to the two-building office building project, Longfellow owns and operates a nearby 570,000 square-foot modern tech and life science campus. The campus, called SOVA Science District, neighbors the current lab conversion project and consists of 19 assets in total. Similarly to the former Foundry office campus, SOVA Science District features innovative lab space, creative office space and various office amenities.
In total, Longfellow operates 1 million square feet of lab and office space in San Diego, and nearly 7 million square feet in key biotech markets across the country. Since 2018, Longfellow has acquired more than $2 billion of innovative life science projects in the U.S., with $1 billion committed to fund future acquisitions and life science projects.
