Gene editing firm signs 85K sf lease to relocate, expand South SF headquarters

Gene editing firm Graphite Bio agreed to lease about 85,000 square feet at an under-construction life science project in South San Francisco to which it will shift its headquarters, more than doubling its footprint in its home city.

Graphite will occupy the first three floors at Nexus on Grand, a five-story, 141,000-square-foot Class A lab and office building at 233 East Grand Avenue, according to a statement from Savills, which represented the firm in the 10-year lease.

It plans to move its 19,000-square-foot base and research hub from 201 Haskins Way in South San Francisco to the Nexus on Grand next year, according to the San Francisco Business Times, which reported details of the lease earlier.

The new digs, being developed by health care REIT Healthpeak Properties, will allow the publicly traded firm to create a “world-class headquarters and research hub that will enrich the working environment of our team and help our company deliver potential one-time cures to patients who have serious and life-threatening genetic diseases,” Graphite’s Jerry Cacia said in a statement.
It plans to fit out the floors it’s renting at Nexus on Grand with a mix of labs and offices. Before moving into them, Graphite will occupy 20,000 square feet in an unidentified property that it agreed to sublease for two years, Savills said.

Austin Barrett, head of life sciences at Savills, led a team of brokers that represented Graphite on its Nexus on Grand lease and the separate, two-year sublease deal. Available life science and biotech real estate is hard to find in the Bay Area, as the region’s vacancy rate for such property is now less than 2 percent, the release said.

[San Francisco Business Times] — Matthew Niksa

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