City Center Realty Partners in a joint venture partnership with Contrarian Capital Management has acquired the Parker Innovation Hub, a three-building office property in Berkeley's innovation district. The partnership plans to convert the property into a life science facility totaling 40,500 square feet.

The three properties in the Parker Innovation Hub are located at 2607 7^th Street, 918 Parker Street and 2612 8^th Street near several other City Center Realty Partners projects, including The Public Market Emeryville, a 14-acre mixed-use site that is the developer is converting into a biotech hub with 400,000 square feet of new life science buildings, along with up to 60,000 square.

Emeryville, located south of Berkeley, is emerging as the next great life science hub in the Bay Area. With proximity to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, which have a low vacancy rate of 5.7%, Emeryville is attracting biotech and life science companies looking for quality, available space. More than 150 biotech companies are already located in Emeryville, including Novartis, Bayer Healthcare, Amyris and Zymergen. Demand is already exceeding supply. According to Newmark, the life science market has only 122,000 square feet of existing availability but 620,000 square feet of active tenant requirements.