Genentech Opens New Bay Area Green Building to House Up to 1,500 Workers
May 22, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
On Thursday May 21, Genentech had a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of Building 35, a 255,000-square-foot building that will be the site for the company’s product development and bioinformatics units.
Genentech CEO Ian Clark indicates that Building 35 is the second building put up since the company was bought by Roche six years ago. The need for the facilities is an indication of the company’s overall growth, which now employees over 10,000 people at its South San Francisco campus, up from about 1,500 two or three years ago.
The building was designed by Cathy Simon from the architectural firm Perkins + Will with design assistance from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s FlexLab. The focus was on energy-saving techniques, including blinds that automatically rise and fall based on the amount of sunlight, and windows in the atrium of the seven-story building that open by themselves when the temperature outside is 65 to 78 degrees.
As a result, the building is expected to almost 35 percent more energy efficient than the national standard for new office buildings. The building’s unique design allows Building 35 to accommodate 1,500 employees, although it initially is expected to house 850.
The FlexLab built a 600-square-foot model of the building to test energy use, lighting, heating and cooling. “Reducing our environmental impact is a top priority for us,” said Carla Boragno, Genentech’s vice president for site services in a statement.
“Genentech either didn’t exist or just started when I was first elected in 1975,” said Governor Jerry Brown at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “In the next 40 years, who knows what will be discovered in terms of human disease and how we can make lives better.”
Futurelab, an education foundation that receives support from Genentech, recently pledged to build an 8,000-square-foot standalone building at the South San Francisco High School as part of a STEM education initiative. The building, dubbed the Science Garage, will house state-of-the-art biotech classrooms.
Futurelab also includes an elementary school program called Gene Academy, which has been operating since 2008, and the Helix Cup, a middle school competition. They will also be funding a college scholarship in support of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
“Futurelab will better equip teachers in our local community to nurture scientific curiosity in kids at every grade level,” said Ian Clark in a statement. “The program also gives our employees the chance to get involved through volunteering and mentoring.”
The Science Garage will include a lecture room and enough seating and benches for 30 to 35 students per class.
The company also recently applied for enterprise zone benefits in Hillsboro, Oregon as part of the company’s $125 million expansion in the area. “This will bring up to 100 jobs in the next few years,” said Robin Snyder, director of science communications for Genentech in a statement. Genentech has taken advantage of Oregon’s Strategic Investment Program as well, which provides property tax breaks for 15 years in exchange for a $100 million investment in urban areas or a $25 million investment in rural areas.
Genentech’s Hillsboro facility opened in 2010 and was at that time valued at $400 million. Genentech hires 415 people in Hillsboro and plans to hire an additional 100 when it expands in the area.
Genentech did not respond to a request for an interview in time for deadline.
Will PfizerKline Become the Next Pharma Player?
The speculation surrounding a possible bid from Pfizer Inc. for struggling GlaxoSmithKline is heating up, after one closely-watched biotech analyst said in a note last week that Pfizer buying the company would “unlock access to its balance sheet and improve its tax situation.”
Gregg Gilbert, a biotech analyst at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note to investors “Introducing PfizerKline” that he thinks a deal would be “materially accretive” for both companies. Gilbert estimated that a bid priced at $29.86 a share, via half stock and half cash, which would push up Pfizer’s earnings per share by 10 percent to 16 percent beginning in 2016.
“We believe that the company has a sense of urgency to create value by leveraging the power of its balance sheet to do needle-moving deals,” Gilbert wrote. “Since media reports in the past have pointed to the potential for a Pfizer/GSK combination, we are revisiting that theme.”
We want to know, dear readers, if you agree? Should Glaxo continue going it alone, or might Pfizer buy it and create one of the world’s largest pharma players in history?