University of California Acquires College Campus in Belmont

The University of California system is expanding its land holdings in the Peninsula.

Under a newly announced deal, UC will acquire nearly 100 acres of land in Belmont from Notre Dame de Namur University, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The arrangement includes NDNU’s 46-acre campus in the middle of Belmont as well as Water Dog Lake, a 50.5-acre preserve on the city’s east side.

UC will lease the campus back to NDNU for up to five years. Water Dog Lake will remain leased to the city of Belmont. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

For now, UC doesn’t have its own plans for the campus, but that could change. Dianne Klein, the university system’s investments director, said in a statement to the Business Times that the site could have a UC “institute or other such research center” one day.

“Land is one of the most precious resources in the state of California, and especially land close to our UC campuses and Silicon Valley,” Klein said.

The University of California has five campuses across Northern California including Davis, Merced and Santa Cruz as well as San Francisco and Berkeley in the Bay Area.

NDNU’s agreement with UC comes after the Catholic university was in talks with Stanford University for a leasing deal. Stanford first attempted to purchase Notre Dame’s Belmont campus in 2021 and bolstered its pitch with plans to build out the campus and add as many as 200 homes. But the school backed out in February, citing factors that “could not be anticipated” and an uncertain future for research universities.

UC’s arrangement with NDNU isn’t the only way the university system is expanding its presence in Silicon Valley.

In 2023, UC Berkeley announced it would partner with NASA and San Francisco-based developer SKS Partners on a 1.4-million-square-foot research and education facility at NASA’s Moffett Field in Mountain View.

That development, called the Berkeley Space Center at NASA Research Park, will feature housing as well as state-of-the-art R&D labs for tech companies and UC Berkeley researchers and classrooms for UC Berkeley students. Some of the new buildings could be ready for move-in as early as 2027, according to the project website.

— Chris Malone Méndez