Transwestern Plans 390K SF Life Science Campus in Vacaville

Transwestern Ventures and the City of Vacaville, CA, have jointly announced plans to develop a 390K SF biomanufacturing campus on 22.4 acres in the Vaca Valley Business Park. 

The project will be built in two phases. Phase I will see the construction of a 233,888 SF building scheduled to be completed in 2024, to be followed by a 158K SF building.

Transwestern Real Estate Services, which will handle leasing for the new campus, has acquired the land for the project in an off-market transaction.

Transwestern Ventures said it will design the two buildings on the campus to meet the needs of a variety of tenants, including biomanufacturing and R&D companies as well as health care and medical office occupiers.

The campus will be part of the 1.4M SF Vaca Valley Business Park, an office and industrial complex that includes Agenus, Kaiser Permanente, Genetech and Polaris as tenants. The Vaca Valley complex is located at the interchange of I-80 and I-505 in NoCal.

Formed earlier this year by Transwestern as an opportunistic investment platform, Transwestern Ventures has focused on life science, health care, office, industrial and hospitality assets, as well as multifamily properties and land development opportunities.

“Vacaville is a biomanufacturing leader in the US, making this area incredibly attractive to companies looking for modern facilities in a region with a critical shortage of available life sciences space,” said Fred Knapp, managing partner, Transwestern Ventures, in a statement.

“Some of the world’s leading life sciences firms have come to Vacaville to capitalize on the synergies created by a combination of extraordinary talent, relative affordability, and the city’s strong economic and demographic trends,” Knapp said.

Vacaville’s proximity to San Francisco, Sacramento and the University of California’s Berkeley and Davis campuses provides access to top talent across the life sciences and advanced manufacturing sectors. Solano Community College in Vacaville offers two biomanufacturing degree programs.

According to the California Biomanufacturing Center, a nonprofit biotech accelerator in Vacaville, there are more than 240 acres available for development in an area that has been a hub of biomanufacturing for more than 30 years.

In 2020, the City of Vacaville signed a memorandum of understanding with Solano Community College to designate 300 acres as the California Biomanufacturing Center. Agenus, a Massachusetts-based pharmaceuticals company, began operations in Vacaville last year.

According to Transwestern’s Q1 2022 Bay Area Life Sciences Report, burgeoning demand for life sciences space in the Bay Area resulted in a total of more than 3.9M SF of leased space in Q1, a YoY increase of 47%. There also was a record 4M SF under construction in the first quarter.

Despite the robust pipeline, life sciences vacancy rates were a tight 2.4%.