Dropbox is subletting even more space in its Mission Bay headquarters as it implements a remote-first work policy, targeting life science tenants who find it difficult to work from home.
The file-sharing company plans to lease 660,000 square feet, meaning it will retain just 90,000 feet of the 750,000 feet that’s available, according to the San Francisco Business Times. It’s been leasing space since last year.
Vir Biotechnology and BridgeBio have already leased more than 180,000 square feet of the available space as Dropbox capitalizes on unprecedented demand for life science real estate. While San Francisco has millions of square feet of available office space, room for laboratories amounts to just 10,000 square feet. Kidder Mathews says the lab vacancy rate stands at just 3.7 percent.
At 400,000 square feet, the Dropbox sublease will be the only life science development that size available in San Francisco.
Dropbox expects to take an impairment charge of more than $17 million for the leases in the first quarter of the year, according to an SEC filing. The company took a charge of almost $400 million in 2020’s fourth quarter tied to a shift to a “virtual-first work model.”
Dropbox’s headquarters was completed in 2019 and features a 50-50 lab-to-office ratio. Longfellow Real Estate Partners and KKR acquired the complex from Kilroy Realty in March for more than $1 billion in March, a record square-foot price for San Francisco.
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