NoCal Office Park Converting to Life Sciences Hub

Redwood Shores, an 84-acre office park in Redwood City, CA is about to get a new life as a mixed-use, 3.3M SF life sciences hub with a 104-room hotel, a 46K amenity center and four parks. 

Longfellow Real Estate Partners, which has formally submitted an application for the project to city officials, is planning to call the redeveloped mixed-use hub Redwood Life: Evolve.

Longfellow acquired the property, its first acquisition in the Bay Area, in 2019. According to a report in the Silicon Valley Business Journal, the company pre-applied for the mixed use project in 2021 and has indicated it would like to begin construction by 2025.

Longfellow fundamentally believes in making long-term investments in our communities, which is why we’ve been working with community stakeholders and neighbors for nearly two years to inform this proposal,” Peter Fritz, Longfellow’s senior director of development, said in prepared remarks.

“The resulting project application proposes a campus that will attract world-class life sciences companies while bringing extensive community and economic benefits to the region,” Fritz said.

Longfellow has been increasing its holdings in the Bay Area. Last year, Longfellow acquired the two-building San Mateo Bay Center office complex for $156M from Rubicon Point Partners.

Longfellow is converting the 250K San Mateo office complex to serve life science tenants as part of an expanding Bay Area portfolio with multiple Class A lab properties. Newmark handled the deal.

“San Mateo Bay offered an ideal rollover pattern offering immediate conversion opportunities, coupled with a strong rent roll providing cash flow through conversion,” Steven Golubchik, Newmark vice chairman, said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Longfellow Real Estate Partners acquired a 75-year ground lease to develop, finance and operate a new 455K SF life sciences facility on the Pennovation Works campus in Philadelphia.

Pennovation Works, a 23-acre University of Pennsylvania property across the Schuykill River from the university’s core campus, is a former DuPont chemical research facility that was converted in 2016 into the Pennovation Center, an incubator for science and technology startups.

The $365M R&D facility Longfellow will develop is expected to include 387K SF of biotech research space and about 68K SF that will be reserved for biomanufacturing, GlobeSt.com reported. University of Pennsylvania officials said the facility will keep Philadelphia’s biotech startups in proximity to expanding cell and gene therapy programs at the university.

Construction on the new building will begin next year and is scheduled to be completed by 2025.