Longfellow and PGIM Eye Office Makeover in Redwood City

Longfellow Real Estate Partners and PGIM want to turn a low-slung office and research campus in Redwood City into a field of office highrises, a hotel and parks.

The Boston-based developer and New Jersey-based investor have filed plans to redevelop the 90-acre Redwood LIFE campus at 800-3800 Bridge Parkway and 900-1300 Island Drive, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported.

The City Council approved the preparation of an environmental study this week.

The campus, built during the 1990s, now has 20 two-story, cookie-cutter buildings with 1 million square feet of offices surrounded by parking lots north of the Redwood Shores Lagoon. It’s home to such life science firms as Nevro, Procept BioRobotics and Jasper Therapeutics.

The developer owns the site with PGIM, the investment management arm of Prudential Financial.

Longfellow has proposed gradually replacing the office buildings and tearing up all but 3 percent of the parking lots.

The new development, to be called Redwood LIFE: Evolve, would include 13 buildings from 55 feet to 100 feet tall with a combined 3.1 million square feet of offices.

Designed by St. Louis-based HOK Group, the project would include a 104-room hotel, a 46,000-square-foot conference center with a food court and outdoor terrace, and 47 acres of green belts, parks, amphitheaters, athletic courts, lawns and gardens.

Parking garages under the new buildings would serve more than 7,000 cars, more than twice the capacity of the current campus.

Longfellow has offered to fund levee improvements along the surrounding slough to prevent flooding from expected sea-level rise. It also pledged to contribute $85 million for affordable housing in Redwood City and another $2 million for childcare.

If approved, the Redwood LIFE campus makeover would be built in seven phases over 25 years, with the first phase to break ground in 2025, according to the Business Journal.

In March, Longfellow Real Estate secured a $310 million construction loan to build a 315,000-square-foot life science campus now under construction at 210 Adrian Road in Millbrae.

In recent years, the company bought property in San Mateo and across the bay in Emeryville. Its portfolio, which spans more than 12 million square feet of lab space, includes projects in Redwood City, Palo Alto and San Francisco’s Mission Bay.

In May, PGIM Real Estate and Pacific Development filed plans to build 368 homes at 1777 Clement Avenue in Alameda.

— Dana Bartholomew