PUBLICATION: BUSINESS JOURNAL SAN FRANCISCO
Call it a sign of the times: A South San Francisco building that formerly housed several divisions of Johnson & Johnson employees is slated for conversion into Class A lab space.
San Francisco investor DivcoWest acquired the 143,383-square-foot office and R&D building from Johnson & Johnson for $164.5 million, or about $1,147 a square foot, on Jan. 7, the company said in a statement. It intends to immediately begin work to convert the property for lab use.
The Business Times reported in March last year that Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) planned to close the facility, located at 5000 Shoreline Court in South San Francisco. J&J acquired the building in 2017 as part of its acquisition of Actelion.
DivcoWest will outfit the building with a new generator system, a lab-quality HVAC system as well as utility upgrades and updates to common areas, the company said in its statement. It will begin work on the property without a tenant in hand, though it expects the building could be ready for tenant occupancy as early as the first quarter of next year. It did not disclose the cost of the planned renovation work.
The buy represents DivcoWest’s second life science grab in the last few weeks: The company acquired a 99,000-square-foot single-story research building at 6550 Dumbarton Circle in Fremont in mid-December 2021, the company confirmed. Property records show DivcoWest paid $72 million for the property.
The company’s website shows it already owns a number of life science properties in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, submarket, another of the country’s biotech hubs. DivcoWest is actively expanding its life science portfolio in the Bay Area, the company said in its statement…READ MORE.