A recently returned corporate citizen of Orange County has gotten started on one of the largest office developments under way in California—an 884,000-square-foot project that will mix a hotel and retail space into an office development intended for lifescience companies in the Bay Area.
Irvine-based HCP Inc. kicked off construction of the first phase of The Cove at Oyster Point this month. The healthcare-focused real estate investment trust returned its headquarters to OC in 2014 after a 10-year stay in Long Beach.
The 20-acre waterfront campus it is now developing is on Oyster Point Boulevard in South San Francisco, near the 101 Freeway.
The campus design consists of seven buildings ranging in size from 102,000 square feet to 158,000. The buildings, running as tall as five stories, will include single- and multitenant configurations.
Local reports say it’s the first multitenant lifesciences campus in the Bay Area to break ground in nearly seven years.
The first phase—two buildings totaling 253,000 square feet—is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2016.
No tenants have been signed for the project, which is near the local offices of drugmaker Amgen Inc. and numerous other drug or medical device makers that fall into the category of lifescience companies. Brokers with the Foster City office of CBRE Group Inc. have the listing for the project.
San Francisco-based Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Co., which Newport Beach-based developer Irvine Company has been using for several of its recent OC office projects, is the builder. DES Architects + Engineers of Redwood City is the project’s designer.
HCP bought the land for the project, a former U.S. Steel site, about four years ago for a reported $65 million.
The deal will add to an-already huge portfolio for HCP, whose national portfolio of healthcare properties includes more than 160 buildings in California. The company has a market value of about $21 billion and is one of the largest publically traded REITs in the U.S.
HCP leases about 25,000 square feet at the 1920 Main St. tower in the Irvine Concourse office campus, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
It’s the company’s second stint as an OC-based company.
It moved from OC to Long Beach in 2004, when the company was known as Health Care Property Investors Inc., and it had a market value of about $3.8 billion, much lower than its current valuation.
