DRA, Blue Rise Seek Buyer for Alameda Research Buildings

DRA Advisors and Blue Rise Ventures are looking to offload a piece of the Research Park at Marina Village in Alameda.

Three buildings in the Alameda campus are being marketed for sale by CBRE, the San Francisco Business Times reported. A pricing guide for the three structures has not been unveiled; current owners Blue Rise Ventures and DRA Advisors purchased the entire 32-building, 1.3-million-square-foot complex in 2019 for $265 million.

The three-building portfolio, named MV3, includes both office and medical spaces totaling 134,727 square feet. The properties are being offered on an as-is basis, according to marketing materials cited by the Business Times. A buyer has the option to buy any combination of the three buildings or acquire the entire portfolio outright, Kati Thabit, vice president at CBRE, said.

The three structures at 1050 Marina Village Parkway, 1080 Marina Village Parkway and 815 Atlantic Avenue are 81 percent leased with tenants like Hormel Foods and the Alameda Hospital. Users of the buildings will be able to access The Retreat, an amenity center on the campus that has basketball courts, a gym, a high-tech conference center and connection to the Encinal Yacht Club.

The largest property is 1080 Marina Village Parkway, which clocks in at 90,000 square feet and 82 percent occupancy. The structure currently has a vacant 12,000-square-foot space open to interested owner-users with the option to expand as other leases in the buildings expire. Nearby 1050 Marina Village Parkway spans 19,576 square feet and is 60 percent leased, while 815 Atlantic Avenue is 24,904 square feet and 95.4 percent leased.

Upon purchasing the complex in 2019, DRA and Blue Rise planned to convert the vacant suites into research and development space, according to the Business Times. Today, the Research Park at Marina Village has more than 40 life science and research tenants occupying more than 500,000 square feet.

Alameda is outperforming its Bay Area neighbors when it comes to commercial occupancy. As of the fourth quarter of last year, Alameda registered an office vacancy rate of 7.3 percent, well below the regional average of 25.5 percent, per CBRE data cited by the Business Times. Alameda’s R&D vacancy hit roughly 14.8 percent in the third quarter, also below the regional average of approximately 17.6 percent.

— Chris Malone Méndez