A new biotech building has been approved in South San Francisco for a site between Highway 101, Grand Avenue and the recently renovated Caltrain station.
The eight-story building will sit on a long-vacant 4-acre lot on Dubuque Ave. 580 are built and when completed will overlook the motorway and the railway tracks. It will also be the first research and development project in the city to fully address two of the city council’s key priorities, as the building will be both fully electric and include minimal parking to encourage the use of public transport.
“It’s really going to set a standard for biotechnology development,” Councilor James Coleman said. “Not just here in South San Francisco, but across the Bay Area and across the country for what this industry can be: green, sustainable, and for the community.”
The building will have 295,000 square feet of laboratory and office space, accommodating approximately 842 employees, and include a four-story underground parking garage with 346 spaces.
Typically, developments of this size in the area would include 500 or more parking spaces, but city planners said they hope 40% of employees will use modes of transport other than single-person vehicles given the site’s proximity to the train station. Also mentioned is the possibility of sharing parking spaces with neighboring locations.
“We have a very, aggressively low parking rate,” said Justine Nielsen, senior vice president at IQHQ, the developer overseeing the project. “[It] is below what our brokers tell us and certainly below what many of our competitors are doing.”
The building also goes beyond the city’s environmentally conscious regulations, which mandate building electrification, which currently only applies to new housing developments. The council had stopped extending the rules to commercial buildings amid concerns about additional strain on the electricity grid and fears that biotechnology applications could require natural gas for some laboratory operations.
The developer indicated that compliance with 100% electric power would entail an additional upfront cost of $1.5 million.
Several improvements to the surrounding pedestrian streets will be added, including a new landscaped walkway parallel to Dubuque Avenue. Fifty new trees will be planted on the site, which was used for industrial purposes prior to the 1990’s and more recently used to store construction equipment and materials for Caltrain’s electrification work.
The ground floor will house a coffee shop open to the public, and a fitness center and meeting rooms and outdoor seating will also be located on the ground floor.
Council members praised the building’s architecture, which will feature “perforated metal louvers” that will have the appearance of a rusty patina. Councilor Mark Addiego said, based on renderings, the design is among his top 3 for new structures in the area.
“Where it’s placed, where it’s standing just above the freeway, that’s going to be noticed equally, so I can only be delighted and supportive and ready to see it get off the ground,” he said. “I think IQHQ can see the long-term benefits of this package, but many people balked at it because it had some very unique challenges.”
As part of the agreement, the developer will collectively contribute $16.8 million to various city funds to go towards infrastructure, affordable housing and childcare, among other things. The developer is contributing an additional $3.5 million to fund improvements to the adjacent Caltrain station
Overhead wires serving the station will also be laid underground, an endeavor that the developer says will cost $5 million.
Nielsen said she hopes the building will be completed by August 2024.
