Manufacturing/R&D Tenants Demand Flex and Proximity
R&D/advanced manufacturing campus, North Loop 3, located in Harbor Bay Business Park is scheduled for occupancy in spring 2020 with individual buildings ranging from 23,955 square feet to 47,910 square feet.
ALAMEDA, CA—Designed for tenants requiring more than the average warehouse/manufacturing offering, the six-building R&D/advanced manufacturing campus, North Loop 3, is nearing completion. Scheduled for occupancy in spring 2020, its individual buildings located in Harbor Bay Business Park range from 23,955 square feet to 47,910 square feet.
The buildings are on a 12-acre parcel, available for sale or lease to a wide variety of tech, STEM and life sciences tenants. North Loop 3’s central Bay Area campus has accessibility to San Francisco, the Peninsula, Oakland and San Francisco International Airports, Port of Oakland and local universities. The development has a functional footprint offering heavy power and loading, secure building sites, high visibility and low business taxes.
“The potential tenants we’ve been talking to require more than the usual manufacturing or warehouse space. They seek flexible, attractive buildings which allow them to build laboratories, advanced manufacturing, and development and research facilities, to simultaneously accommodate their growing employee base,” said Joe Ernst, president at srmErnst, the developer for the project.
Harbor Bay Business Park also offers freeway access and transportation options including Interstate 880, the Harbor Bay ferry to San Francisco and South San Francisco, and a business park shuttle to the ferry and Coliseum BART station, which is free to end users.
Newmark Knight Frank, srmErnst and Hillwood Investment Properties recently teamed up for an open house to showcase the campus. Steve Kapp, Newmark Knight Frank executive managing director, is spearheading all sales and leasing efforts for the campus along with NKF director Shawn Klein.
“I envision a tech, life science or bio company occupying this campus for multiple and logical reasons,” Kapp tells GlobeSt.com. “The access to a huge employee pool in the East Bay and South Bay is immediately obvious. srmErnst is positioning this project to appeal to manufacturing and R&D tenants who today are demanding more flexible and conveniently located facilities. Interest has been robust thus far and we’ve had several discussions with potential tenants. When you consider that it takes only 20 minutes on the Alameda Ferry to reach San Francisco, I can’t imagine anything more conveniently located for a workforce or an R&D/advanced manufacturing company that requires easy access to all cities in the Bay Area.”
The positive momentum of the San Francisco Bay Area life science market at the close of 2018 carried over into the first quarter of 2019, which finished with 240,746 square feet of positive net absorption, according to a first quarter report by NKF. The market currently consists of 938,602 square feet of available life science space and closed the first quarter with a 3.9% vacancy, down from 4.9% in the previous quarter but up from 4.2% a year ago. Tenant demand decreased 5.1% during the first quarter to approximately 3.1 million square feet, with a majority of the requirements in the 1,000 to 19,999 and 20,000 to 49,999-square-foot ranges, says NKF’s director of research Andrea Arata.