IQHQ inks first life sciences tenant in downtown's waterfront RaDD
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A rendering of the J. Craig Venter Institute's downtown space at RaDD.
IQHQ's $1.9 billion investment in building a life sciences hub in downtown San Diego has inked its first life sciences tenant.
Why it matters: The success of the 1.7-million-square-foot Research and Development District (RaDD) carries significant implications for one of the region's most important industries, and for the outlook for downtown as a jobs center.
Driving the news: The J. Craig Venter Institute — a genomics research group that in 1995 published the first sequenced genome of a free-living organism — announced Tuesday it was relocating its West Coast operation to RaDD.
- JCVI is vacating its space on the UCSD campus, in the heart of the central San Diego submarket where the life sciences industry has long been based, and which has proven sticky as IQHQ has tried to draw tenants downtown.
State of play: They'll occupy a full floor on the RaDD campus, taking up 50,000 square feet of space that will be home to about 100 employees.
- Terms of the deal were not disclosed, except that they'll occupy a full floor beginning next year.
- Venter said in a statement he is "excited about the transformation this dynamic campus will bring to the San Diego waterfront community."
Between the lines: Matt Carlson, a San Diego-based analyst at CBRE who focuses on life sciences, told Axios earlier this year that part of IQHQ's slow lease-up was due to the large floor plates it built.
- He said a few very big deals — 100,000 square feet or more — when IQHQ was planning RaDD led it to build large, 50,000-square-foot spaces that are not historically common in San Diego's life sciences industry.
Friction point: Last year, IQHQ leased about half of its 200,000 square feet of retail space, but the persistent vacancy of its office and science space had been a significant concern.
- Last May, shares of Bank OZK, the project's lender, plunged after a Citigroup analyst downgraded its stock because pharmaceutical companies were rejecting the space.
The bottom line: "It only takes one to get it going," said IQHQ co-CEO Tracy Murphy in January, when she suggested the firm would announce a lease in 2025.
- "But it's easy to criticize when you're doing something different than the 50 people behind you," she said.