UC Berkeley, SKS Plan $2B Space Innovation Hub in Mountain View

UC Berkeley and San Francisco-based developer SKS Partners are planning to build a $2 billion innovation hub at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View.

The partners are planning to call the 36-acre innovation hub the Berkeley Space Center at NASA Research Park. The master plan for the Space Center features 1.4 million square feet of Class-A office and R&D space, including wet and dry labs, as well as conference space, academic facilities and retail amenities.

The Space Center plan also includes 18 acres of open space, including outdoor working yards and a central green area which will serve as a flexible platform for community gatherings and exhibitions. The open space will feature a circular trellis, according to renderings.

Later phases of the project will include short-term stay facilities, as well as student and faculty housing. The hub is expected to support 6,000 advanced R&D positions.

The joint venture is “dedicated to identifying, incubating and launching technological breakthroughs across a diverse set of fields including astronautics, quantum computing, climate studies and the social sciences,” according to a press release.

The triangular project site sits at the corner of Westcoat and Cody roads, across the street from Hangar One, Moffett Federal Airfield and the Moffett Field Historical Society Museum.

CBRE has been tapped to find tenants for the Berkeley Space Center, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News. Ben Knight, a CBRE executive vice president, said the center “will play a key role in advancing innovation, offering Silicon Valley’s top companies and world-class educational institutions a hub for discovery and transformation.”

Construction on the Berkeley Space Center will begin in 2026, but pre-leasing negotiations already are underway.

“This planned expansion of Berkeley’s physical footprint and academic reach represents a fantastic and unprecedented opportunity for our students, faculty and the public we serve,” UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ, said in a statement.

In 2022, Google opened its Bay View campus on land leased from NASA. A Google subsidiary, Planetary Ventures, is in the midst of a renovation of Hanger One, which was built in the early 1930s to house the USS Macon, the largest dirigible operated by the US Navy.

The Macon crashed during a storm off Point Sur in 1935. After the crash, Hanger One was used for several decades to house military training aircraft.

In addition to UC Berkeley and SKS Partners, the development team for the Space Center includes HOK, a global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm known for large-scale projects, including the NOAA Daniel K. Inouye Regional Center in Pearl Harbor and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL.

Also participating in the project is Field Operations, an interdisciplinary urban design and landscape architecture firm, known for the High Line and Cornell Tech Campus in New York City and the Presidio Tunnel Tops in San Francisco.