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Device Maker Moves: Glaukos Sets Sights on 2022

Glaukos Corp. (NYSE: GKOS), has again moved back the expected timeline from moving its headquarters from San Clemente to Aliso Viejo.

In 2018, the $2 billion-valued maker of stents and drugs treating glaucoma and other eye diseases announced plans to move into a three-building, 160,000-square-foot facility in Aliso Viejo.

Glaukos’ deal for the entire Element campus was the largest office lease in Orange County in 2018.

2 Years of Delays

The 13-year lease at the Element campus in the city officially kicked off in 2019, but the headquarters relocation has yet to take place, due in part to pandemic-related delays.

In August, the company said in regulatory filings that a September move was planned, but the company’s latest quarterly earnings report in November subsequently pushed back that move to the early part of 2022.

Glaukos has a pair of options to extend the lease beyond the initial term for five years each. It plans to keep its existing San Clemente operations open “for the foreseeable future” after the Aliso Viejo move, it said.

The Aliso Viejo campus will hold offices and research spaces, the company said.

Multiple Sales

When the eye care-focused device maker struck the 2018 lease, the Aliso Viejo property’s owner was Newport Beach’s Waterford Property Co.

In 2020, Irvine-based IRA Capital paid Waterford $73.5 million for the former home of technology firm QLogic. That price, which works out to nearly $460 per square foot, was more than double what Waterford paid in 2016 for the then-vacant property.

This summer, IRA sold the campus to Chicago-based Nuveen Real Estate as part of a larger, $620.4 million portfolio sale. 

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