East Bay pharmaceutical company leases waterfront life science space

A local life science company has leased a whole building near the waterfront in Alameda, joining a number of blue-chip tenants at the nearly 700,000-square-foot campus near Radius Bay Harbor.

Emeryville-based biopharmaceutical company Vivani signed on for the 44,000-square foot property 1350 South Loop Class A office building recently converted to include lab space. The upgrades, completed last year included capacity for as much as 25,000 square feet of lab space, about 60 percent. The space can support a chemistry lab, biology lab, pilot plant or lab support.

The property owners are Paceline Investors and True North Management Group. Some of the noteworthy tenants at the Radius include Abbott Laboratories, Exelixis and Penumbra.

“Building labs on a speculative basis is a high-risk, high-reward endeavor, so the pipeline of new

spaces in the East Bay remain thin,” Conor Ranahan from Newark, who represented the landlords, said.

The Bay Area life science sector withstood inflation and high interest rates to maintain its high demand for space in the fourth quarter, according to a report by Newmark. Current demand for life science space is 5.2 million square feet last quarter, which is up slightly from 5.1 million square feet in the previous quarter and up from 4.5 million one year ago.

The market’s vacancy increased to 7.1 percent this quarter, up slightly from 7 percent in the previous quarter; while availability increased to 9.7 percent, up from 9.3 percent in the previous quarter.

Vivani’s lease appears to be the third- largest in the East Bay last quarter, with Exelixis’ 100,000 square feet lease at Radius being the largest, and Metagenomi’s 78,000-square foot sublease in Emeryville second.

Investors don’t see the demand for life science space slowing down with an additional 1.2 million square feet of construction added to the pipeline last quarter, bringing the total to 7.7 million square feet of space in the works.