San Diego biotech Sorrento Therapeutics is paying top dollar to lease a five-story building that’s anticipated to be completed in early 2023
San Diego biotech Sorrento Therapeutics is expanding its physical footprint and taking over the yet-to-be-constructed research facility across the street from its existing headquarters.
The publicly traded firm, which is currently studying coronavirus treatments and tests, has agreed to lease the 163,000 square-foot building planned for 4930 Directors Place in Sorrento Mesa, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange commission. The biotech will rent the office and lab building — to be developed by owner-operator Healthpeak Properties — for 188 months (or nearly 16 years) at a rate of $5.10 per square foot to start.
The $120 million project, also known as Sorrento Gateway, is scheduled to break ground in the third quarter of this year and construction is anticipated wrap up in early 2023. The five-story building will feature expansive views, an on-site cafe and fitness center, as well as outdoor seating and collaboration areas, according to marketing materials and other public presentations.
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“This project will allow us to meet the demand we are seeing from both existing and new tenants,” Scott Brinker, Healthpeak’s president and chief investment officer, said in a press release.
Sorrento Gateway is the third, new-construction project since 2020 for Denver-based Healthpeak, a real estate investment trust that specializes in lab and medical buildings. The firm also recently pre-leased its 185,000 square-foot, two-building Callan Ridge development in Torrey Pines to cancer therapy biotech Turning Point Therapeutics.
The latest lease is a sign of continued demand for life science space in submarkets adjacent to Torrey Pines, where rents are climbing amid an overall scarcity of real estate clustered near science and research institutions. The Sorrento Therapeutics lease appears to set a new baseline for the Sorrento Mesa submarket, where real estate brokerage JLL expects average asking rents for top-tier, lab-ready buildings to balloon from $4.60 per square foot plus taxes and other expenses at the end of March to $5 per square foot plus taxes and other expenses in the second half of the year.
Started in 2009 and based in San Diego, Sorrento Therapeutics employs around 500 people across the world. The company owns the FDA-approved prescription medication ZTLido, a lidocaine patch for people who have recovered from shingles. It’s also developing pain management drugs, cancer fighting therapies and rapid COVID-19 diagnostics. Last year, it rebuffed a billion-dollar buyout offer.
Representatives from Sorrento Therapeutics and Healthpeak Properties did not respond to a request for comment.
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