Astellas Pharma Opens Bay Area Innovation Center

May 9, 2024

Office Development News San FranciscoMoreWest

This property was the first delivery in a 1.7 million-square-foot campus.

480forbes — Astellas Pharma’s new West Coast Innovation Center, part of a larger 1.7 million-square-foot project. *Image courtesy of CommercialEdge*

Astellas Pharma Inc. has opened the West Coast Innovation Center, a new 154,000-square-foot laboratory and office facility in South San Francisco, Calif. The Japanese company leased the entire Building A of Vantage, a 20-acre, three-phase life science campus that is being developed by Healthpeak Properties.

Astellas took initial occupancy of the space in December and plans to house all of its Bay Area-based employees there. Completion of several of the building’s amenity spaces, including an auditorium and cafeteria, is expected this summer.

Previously, employees from Astellas’ Gene Therapies, Xyphos Biosciences, business development and Rx+ Business Accelerator arms and subsidiaries worked out of separate offices in San Francisco and Menlo Park, Calif. Nearly 300 of them have already relocated to Vantage and 200 more will follow, according to San Francisco Business Times.

Built and occupied in phases

Astellas’ new abode came online in 2023 as part of Vantage’s three-building, 343,000-square-foot first phase. The five-story, LEED certified building has floorplates averaging 35,000 square feet, with each section configurable to both laboratory and office space.

Almost concurrently with Building A’s opening, Healthpeak gained the approval of entitlements for Phases II and III, which will include 1.3 million square feet of additional laboratory space. The announcement came nearly two months after the $21 billion all-stock merger between the firm and Physicians Realty Trust.

The campus’ Building B is slightly larger, at six stories and roughly 188,0000 square feet, while its third component is a 40,000-square-foot, free-standing amenity center that includes a café, a fitness center and pop-up dining spaces, as well as larger meeting and conference spaces. CBRE handles leasing at the property.

Located at 480 Forbes Blvd. within South San Francisco’s life science cluster, Astellas’ West Coast Innovation Center is within 1 mile of access to the U.S. Route 101, with stops of the SFO, Caltrain and BART located 4 miles away. Neighbors include Genentech, Yali Bio and National Bioskills laboratories.

Healthpeak now owns 13 campuses in the Bay Area totaling 5.2 million square feet, with roughly 500,000 square feet in active development.

Golden City’s office sector struggles with vacancies

Despite having the second-largest office pipeline in the nation, San Francisco’s office sector has struggled with vacancy as of late, according to a CommercialEdge report. The metro has seen a 510-basis-point year-over-year increase in vacancy as of March, the rate reaching 24.2 percent. The larger Bay Area fared slightly better, at 20.8 percent.

Characteristically, most recent leasing and development activity in the city and its surroundings has been driven by AI and life science companies. Last month, IQHQ topped out Spur Phase One, a 330,000-square-foot transit-oriented project in South San Francisco. Completion is expected by early 2025.

Two weeks prior, Alexandria closed on a renewal and six-year extension of a lease with insitro for 143,188 square feet at the Alexandria Center for Advanced Technologies – South San Francisco campus. The tenant’s initial lease at this location was in 2018 for nearly 36,000 square feet of lab space.