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 Seaport Centre Logo | |
| Location | Redwood City, California |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 37°30′06″N122°13′03″W / 37.50155°N 122.21747°W /37.50155; -122.21747 |
| Opening date | 1980s |
| Owner | Segro |
| Website | www |
Seaport Centre is ahigh-techbusiness park located inRedwood City,California, United States, and as of 2007 is one of the largest biotechnology research complexes in theSan Francisco Bay Area.
The property consists of 623,000 square feet (57,900 m2) of developed building area, and is situated in proximity to thePort of Redwood City.[1] The property is classified asClass A office space and is constructed as a series of separate buildings. The original lands of the Seaport Centre were used assalt evaporation ponds on tidal lands of theSan Francisco Bay, a land use that started sometime prior to 1940. As of 2002 leasing rates at Seaport Centre were in the range of $27 per square foot per annum.[2] In 2005,Slough Estates, a United Kingdom-basedREIT, purchased the entirety of Seaport Centre to develop it as abiotechnology research center to compete with the existing biotech hubs inSilicon Valley andSouth San Francisco.
The Seaport Centre is located on generally level ground at approximately 25 feet (8 m) abovemean sea level.[3] Stormwatersurface runoff is pumped from Seaport Centre to discharge intoRedwood Creek.
Due to the large scale of this area and its historical lack of accessibility, the area history can be revealed well with aerial photographic records. In 1989, the firm of Earth Metrics Incorporated conducted a review of historic aerial photographs dating back to 1956.(Earth Metrics, 1989) The Seaport Centre site and its environs, as of the 1956 aerial stereo photo, were essentially undeveloped, although extensivesalt evaporation ponds were evident on site. Redwood City Planning Department records confirm that the site was used for salt evaporation since sometime prior toWorld War II.
Analysis of five sets of time staged stereo pairs of aerial photos reveal that the Seaport Centre site remained undeveloped until 1982; up until that time, city records show that the site was zoned as "Tidal Plain", a designation not allowing urban development. Area land use gradually changed from 1956 until 1982, in the form of gradual building development in the local area. As early as 1956 arail spur is evident, which served the loading of rawsea salt for export from the area. Noagricultural history is associated with the site, other than thesalt harvesting.[4]
Since development of Seaport Centre in the early 1980s there has been a consistent trend of the property's use as a research and development hub for the biotech industry. In a 1989 tenant survey, some of the principal tenants present were: Vascualar Interventions Inc., Genelabs Incorporated, Precision Images Inc., Invitron, Charles Evans Inc., ICT Corporation, Resound Incorporated, Ideon Corporation,Cygnus Research Corp, Color Prep, Aurora Systems Inc.,Abekas Video Systems Inc.,Personics Inc., Instor Corporation and Visucom, Inc.
A number of these early firms utilized a variety ofhazardous materials in their normal processes. These substances included a variety of toxicsolvents and otherorganic chemicals such asacetone,benzene,methyl ethyl ketone andtoluene. Use of such chemicals on site is considered a risk, since thebrackish groundwater at the Seaport Centre is shallow.
Current tenants still largely focus on the medical and health fields and include: AcelRx Pharmaceuticals,Bavarian Nordic,Codexis,Genomic Health, Guardant Health, Gynesonics, Minerva Surgical,OncoMed,Stem Cell Theranostics, andTeva.
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