AltaSea Develops 35-Acre Green Campus

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.”