University Research Park,The Irvine Company’s effort to link business and Orange County’s most prominent university,is filling up so quickly that the developer is beginning final-phase construction with a possible buildout by 2002, five years earlier than originally planned.
“The park is way ahead of schedule,” said Richard G. Sim, group president of investment properties for the Irvine Co.
“It’s growing like topseed,” said Tom Moebus, vice chancellor for university advancement at the University of California, Irvine, and the school’s point man for the park. “Just in the last 24 hours I’ve had conversations with four technology companies looking to lease offices there.”
Among the most recent deals is the lease of an additional 120,000 square feet by current tenant, ATL Products Inc., a data storage company. ATL now has a 65,000-square-foot facility in the park. It’s leasing two more buildings that it expects to move into by fall to house more than 300 employees.
“Put altogether, we will be leasing 185,000 square feet,” said Kevin Daly, CEO of ATL Products.
The Irvine Co. owns half of the 185-acre park and leases the remaining land from the university. When the Irvine Co. began to place companies in the park in 1997, its officials thought it would take 10 years to complete and fill it.
“We will have the bulk of the buildings under construction by 2001,” said Sim, adding that it could be completely built by the year 2002 or 2003. “We’ll have a $300 million investment in the park when it’s built out.”
The company recently began construction on six new buildings totaling 300,000 square feet next to Bison Ave. This comes on top of the eight buildings that the Irvine Co. already had under construction. Four of those eight buildings have already been leased, but Sim declined to reveal the names of the companies.
The Irvine Co. plans to start the last part of the park, Phases 3 and 4, next year. These will include nine buildings totaling approximately 500,000 square feet in one area and three six-story office buildings totaling 430,000 square feet on a bluff near the Beckman Center.
“Almost a million square feet will be under construction by the end of 2001,” said Sim.
Sim said the six-story buildings could hold offices as small as 250 square feet, which can be rented by UCI faculty who want to start companies.
Currently, the Research Park has 14 buildings built and occupied by 23 companies with 2,000 employees. This is up from the six companies of two years ago. Among the companies are America Online Inc., AltaVista Co., CBS Corp.’s Viacom and Cisco Systems Inc.
With its space in OC and Silicon Valley, Cisco last week became the Irvine Co.’s largest single tenant after striking a pact to take up nine additional buildings at the Irvine Co.’s McCarthy Center in Milpitas. The networking gear maker had previously agreed to take 10 buildings in the complex.
When the University Research Park is built out, it is expected to hold 80 to 100 companies with about 10,000 employees in 2.4 million square feet of office space. Sim said he envisions the park as a “living laboratory.” For example, the university’s Advanced Power and Energy Program signed a deal with the Department of Energy to try out cutting-edge technologies like fuel cells and micro-turbines to fuel the park’s energy needs.
ATL Products’ Daly said that one advantage of a growing Research Park is it affords tenants the ability to expand. He said the park gave his company the opportunity to obtain more space without having to move. ATL Products, which was bought in 1998 by Quantum Corp., has seen its revenue grow by 37% annually in the past six years.
The location across the street from UCI is a great environment for developing companies, Daly said.
“My experience is that the interaction, both formal and informal, results in good influences on us,” he said.
Currently, there are approximately 70 UCI student interns working at companies in the Research Park.
“It’s a place where students and professors walk across the street to meet with CEOs. It’s a meeting place to exchange ideas,” said Sim. n
