Wareham Development In the News

Friday, November 9, 2007
JBEI fuels Emeryville's growth as alternative energy center
East Bay Business Times - by Malia Wollan East Bay Business Times contributor

Geoffrey Sears develops buildings to house brains.

"Steel used to be the raw material of industry, and it came by rail," Sears said, pointing to the train tracks in an aerial photograph of Emeryville mounted in his office. "These days the raw material is brains, and UC-Berkeley is pumping out brains every year."

Sears is a partner in San Rafael-based Wareham Development, the largest commercial developer of laboratory space in the East Bay and developer of the newly completed 245,000-square-foot EmeryStation East, which sits near the Amtrak station in Emeryville and soon will house some of the brightest minds in biotechnology.

In October, the Joint BioEnergy Institute - a major new biofuels research venture known as JBEI - announced a five-year lease with Wareham Development for 65,000 square feet of laboratory space in the new building. With more than

$125 million in Department of Energy funding over five years, JBEI aims to use the lab space to pioneer new ways to turn cellulose - the material that gives plants their structure - into fuel bound for gasoline tanks. JBEI is a collaborative project between UC-Berkeley and UC-Davis; the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and the Carnegie Institution.

In the hunt for cellulosic fuel - the holy grail of biofuels - the East Bay and UC-Berkeley are fast becoming a national research hub. Earlier this year the British oil company BP PLC gave

$500 million to start another biofuels research center led by UC-Berkeley. Thanks to its proximity to the venture-capital rich Silicon Valley and buoyed by California's alternative-energy friendly policies, the area between Davis and Palo Alto is home to beneficiaries of a heavy concentration of biofuel research funding.

The city of Emeryville, in partnership primarily with Wareham Development, is positioning itself to be at the center of that burgeoning biofuels boom. Home to approximately 9,000 residents, Emeryville sees its population balloon during the week to include a work force of more than 20,000, according to City Manager Patrick O'Keeffe. The city has been working since the 1990s to build laboratory and office space and create "a favorable climate" for biotechnology firms such as Novartis AG, said O'Keeffe.

"Emeryville is a real hotbed of biotech activity," said Jay Keasling, director of the Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division, a UC-Berkeley professor of chemical engineering and JBEI's chief executive officer. JBEI chose EmeryStation East from a handful of locations, primarily for its proximity to UC-Berkeley said Keasling, noting that other amenities included Emeryville's free Emery-Go-Round shuttle, the building's internal cogeneration power plant and its copious, multicolored glass windows.

The building's aesthetics seek to find a common ground between the industrial and residential areas of Emeryville. "I wanted to connect the building to the city, so it's not just a façade you walk by," said Lise Barriere a senior designer at SmithGroup in Detroit.

Amyris Biotechnologies Inc., a company launched in 2003 by Keasling and three UC-Berkeley postdoctoral students, will join JBEI at EmeryStation East. "We leased them 5,000 square feet in 2005," said Sears. "Now they're taking 70,000 square feet in the new building. That's growth."

Wareham prides itself on cultivating biotech talent by leasing lab space in tiny increments. Sears hopes to see EmeryStation East's remaining unleased 20,000 square feet go to small startups for 2,500-square-foot labs. Sears said small startups tend to be riskier tenants because they lack initial capital and long-range financial planning.

"But maybe one guy will start a new company with someone down the hall and together they'll have great success," said Sears. "We're in a long-term relationship with biotechnology, so the more eggs we have in our basket, the better."

Hanging in the EmeryStation East lobby is a series of white panels depicting portraits of Bay Area Nobel Prize luminaries such as Steven Chu, physicist and director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"A lot of these guys have glasses and beards," Sears said. Then, pointing to the few blank white panes interspersed between world-renowned scientists, he said. "Maybe those blanks will inspire the next generation."

About Wareham Development

Wareham Development is committed to the long-term economic and environmental vitality of the communities where we do business. During the planning process, we work closely with city and state agencies to ensure that each project provides maximum benefit to its surrounding community. And, unlike many developers who build projects only to sell them, we retain ownership of the majority of our developments, many of which have come to define the thriving technology corridor between the Bay and Richmond-San Rafael bridges.

The Wareham vision encompasses the spark and promise of small companies on the verge of growth, and large corporations whose fortunes span the globe. We are proud of our associations with all of our tenants, and feel deeply privileged to play a role in their success.