Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. will soon put its architects to use on a personal project. The real estate investment trust bought a lot for $17.5 million next to its Pasadena headquarters, and plans to build a home base office.
“It’s part of lifestyle recruitment and retention of employees, and part of our vision. We want to do something that speaks more to our DNA,” said chief executive Joel Marcus. “We didn’t want to move into someone else’s building, or be cramped, or have uninspiring workplaces.”
Alexandria plans to build an office of 70,000 square feet to 80,000 square feet that would incorporate modern design elements such as glass and brick, collaborative workspaces, and retailers like healthy food eateries. The new outpost, which Marcus hopes to complete in 2019, will be roughly double the size of Alexandria’s current office next door, where it leases 46,000 square feet.
Sean Westgate and Matthew Miller at Cresa Partners represented Alexandria in the deal. The seller was MS Property Company, based in Pasadena.
Alexandria specializes in building offices for technology and bioscience companies, holding 190 properties in North America with a focus on the Bay Area, Seattle, New York, and Boston markets. Among its latest tenants include Uber Technologies Inc. and mobile payments company Stripe Inc. in San Francisco, plus pharmaceutical companies Genyzme Corp., owned by Sanofi, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. in Cambridge, Mass.
The company also recently announced the opening of Alexandria LaunchLabs in New York, a 15,000-square-foot incubator space inside the Alexandria Center for Life Science designed to accommodate medical and pharmaceutical startups.
Los Angeles has a smaller biotech roster compared with those hubs. But Marcus said Alexandria’s Pasadena headquarters office benefits the company.
“Our ability to recruit a super talented workforce, with little turnover, has been because of the location,” Marcus said.
Part of the appeal of Pasadena is the opportunity to buy homes in the surrounding cities at rates lower than the Westside. The commitment to Pasadena, where Alexandria was founded in a garage in 1994, led to Alexandria’s decision to build a fresh campus rather than buy an existing property.
“If you look around, stuff looks like stucco and boxy, not our style in particular…and not particularly inspirational,” Marcus said.
Real estate reporter Daina Beth Solomon can be reached at [email protected]. Follow @dainabethcita on Twitter for the latest in L.A. real estate news.
