LOS ANGELES—AltaSea has announced plans to build a 35-acre green “innovation hub” at the Port of L.A. that will provide a center for sustainability, scientific and educational advancements of global issues, like access to clean water and food resources. The first phase of the project will officially break ground in January 2017, and has a board approved budget of $217 million. AltaSea is using the 35-acre site under a 50-year land lease with the port.

“This is a story that speaks to the power of an idea,” Rachel Etherington, CEO of AltaSea, tells GlobeSt.com, explaining that the project is several years in the making and the conception of several visionaries, including Wallis Annenberg. This is a huge opportunity to bring three critical strands together, and those strands are education, science and business,” she adds. “The reason that they are so important to me is that everyone has really fundamentally misunderstood the environmental movement. It is seen as something that is nice to have but that is at odds with economic progress, and there are three ways that we need to resolve this. We need to educate; we need to innovation from a scientific perspective; and we need to commercialize using the private sector. So, I have really shaped it has three hubs that will come together to create the center of innovation. There, we will be working to address, resolve and find solutions to major challenges that affect us globally. Ultimately, environmental progress must happen at this time.”

The innovation hub is still being conceived daily, but the project will definitely include a 20,000-square-foot ocean interpretive center, which will be a ground-up development; a 60,000-square-foot adaptive reuse project of the historic Berth 57 warehouse, which will be used for oceanic science research and classrooms; and a ground-up, 5,000-square-foot office headquarters for AltaSea. The ideas being bounced around—but that are still under conception—include an active weather station and an air conditioning unit that harnesses the temperature of the ocean. “All sorts of developers have come down here, from John Cushman to Richard Lundquist, and they just cannot believe that we have a lease here, because it is unique and it is inherently incredibly valuable,” says Etherington.

AltaSea has partnered with Gensler to see out the vision of the project. They were a good fit, according to Etherington, because of their collaborative nature, ability to listen and familiarity of the site. “What really attracted us to Gensler was the absolute passion of the team. I was looking for a partner who could both deliver technically, on time and on budget, but also a partner that embraced our manifesto,” she says. “They have a great ability and willingness to listen, not only with us but the numerous stakeholders that will be benefitting from this. It has to be a design and build that reflects the user's needs not only now, but 30, 40, 50 years in the future. When we started talking to Gensler, it was really sort of a meeting of minds.”

Not surprisingly, the project has some major economic benefits. For phase one alone, which will break ground in 2017 and take five years to complete, the economic impact is $290 million and the creation of thousands of jobs. Of the $217 million budgeted for the project, the ports have committed $57 million to infrastructure redevelopment.

This project will be an L.A. icon once it is complete, and, because of the location, will be able to make real change in markets throughout the world. “The location originally was chosen because the Southern California Marine Institute is based here,” says Etherington. “Unlike other marine institutes and science programs, we are based on a working port and in a very heavily populated, urban convocation. So, as we are able to crack solutions here, they have great applicability to other ports and other cities.”

Finding this amount of land in an infill location and this amount of waterfront land is incredibly valuable, as Etherington said. Although dissimilar in subject, the San Pedro waterfront recently underwent a renovation also from the Port of L.A. that was met with tremendous success. Last year, the project was unveiled with new public open spaces and a boat-docking harbor along with proposed entitlements for vertical commercial real estate development that will help to improve the overall infrastructure of the San Pedro market. That project cost a total of $32 million.