The group of Peninsula cities trying to lure the stem cell institute to Silicon Valley is offering 15,000 square feet of space at Park Place in Bay Meadows, an upscale business park in San Mateo. The nine-city coalition says it can offer space at a number of other Silicon Valley buildings as well but declined to reveal their locations or any other substantive details yesterday during a press conference. The cities submitting the bid include Daly City, San Mateo, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara. Deborah Bringelson, president and CEO of SAMCEDA and the Peninsula Policy Partnership, which are coordinating the bid, says the coalition is keeping the proposal under wraps until the institute makes its decision. “We believe negotiations with the institute are not over until the deal is done,” she says. Other cities competing to host the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the agency charged under Prop. 71 with disbursing $3 billion for stem cell research over the next decade, have made their proposals public. They include San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego, Emeryville, Los Angeles and Sacramento. Robert Klein, chairman of the institute’s governing board, has encouraged their full disclosure.
