Twenty-five years ago, University of California-Irvine Chancellor Jack Peltason sat down with Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren and decided to build University Research Park.
Many in the Orange County business community have cited the agreement the two men hit upon as a signal achievement for Peltason, who was emeritus chancellor of UC Irvine and emeritus president of the University of California system when he died on March 21 at the age of 91.
“He had a very constructive, supportive, and mutually beneficial relationship with Donald Bren and the Irvine Company,” said an executive familiar with the history of both organizations. “Jack had the best relationship with the business community of any chancellor.”
Irvine Co. put 99 acres up for the park, and UCI contributed 85—land the developer had granted the school more than 20 years earlier.
Nearly one decade and two chancellors later, the university and company agreed to lift certain education-only restrictions on the land. Irvine Co. signed a 75-year lease for UCI’s acres through 2073, forming the 184-acre research and business park.
The idea was to create a “meeting place for an exchange of ideas in a campus-like setting,” said Dick Sim, Irvine Co. group president of investment properties at the time.
“You can walk from the university to meet with CEOs, and CEOs can walk over to campus and talk to students and professors,” he said. “And that has happened.”
UCI receives $5 million a year for its portion of the land, a university spokesperson said.
Build It
Irvine Co. would seek tenants whose work intersected with UCI’s mission as a research university. Sim said the developer wouldn’t lease to anyone who couldn’t prove a university relationship—research, interns, or some other collaboration.
The biggest current tenant is chipmaker Broadcom Corp., with about 920,000 square feet of space.
It pays about $2.70 per square foot a month, or nearly $30 million a year, according to regulatory filings.
Broadcom’s Presence, New Campus
The chipmaker will soon leave the University Research Park for a new headquarters near the Orange County Great Park, a few miles to the east of UCI (see related item in OC Insider column, page 3).
Broadcom only broke ground on its new campus last week and has a lease at University Research Park that runs into 2018. The company takes up 14 of the 36 buildings at the center and more than a third of its total of 2.2 million square feet of space.
Broadcom has grown into a top 10 chipmaker globally during its tenure at University Research Park, offering an example of what Sim called “an ideal setting for a living laboratory” that links back to Peltason, “an amazing guy” who “in a low-key way was able to get people to do things that other people couldn’t.”
Negotiations and securing the agreements of all the parties involved—including campus and academic groups, faculty and the UC Regents—extended beyond Peltason’s tenure as chancellor.
UCI chancellors Laurel Wilkening and Ralph Cicerone were also essential to the deal.
Unique, Leading Edge
“The research park is one of a kind, with first-rate companies,” Sim said.
Peltason and Bren “set aside areas to create leading-edge research on a sound economic base,” Sim said, where both UCI and Irvine Co. would “benefit from their proximity to each other and the exchange of ideas.”
The $5 million UCI gets from the ground lease adds to Bren’s support of UCI, including in professorships.
The Peltason-Bren agreement has helped UCI “attract and keep the most promising and distinguished scholars the university could find,” one executive said.
The Donald Bren Professor program began a few years before the research park deal.
There have been 30 to 35 Bren Professors, said biologist and philosopher Francisco Ayala, who was the first, in 1989.
Ayala said the program was also born out of conversation between Peltason and Bren.
“Peltason found a way to attract distinguished professors and bring research funding,” Ayala said.
Professors earn a regular salary, and funds from the program’s endowment pay for additional research.
Endowments for each Bren Professor are in the seven figures, Ayala said.
There are currently nine Bren Professors, including four vacancies, according to the university.
At one point, professors also gave lectures under a sister program, Ayala said.
In early 1996, Ayala organized a full-day program where the 15 participants were Nobel Prize winners from California, including two UCI professors in chemistry and physics, he said.
It was held at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, another touchstone of the UCI campus that came about under Peltason’s stewardship.
“He played a major role,” said Sim, founding chairman of the Barclay.
A deal between the city, UCI and the private sector raised the $18 million needed.
Sim estimated current replacement costs for the Barclay at more than $40 million.
