Venter Institute Raises $53M Through Sale-Leaseback Deal
The $53 million generated by the sale of the J. Craig Venter Institute’s five-building campus in Rockville, MD, could help finance construction of a multi-disciplinary research facility proposed for a scenic coastal bluff on the U.C. San Diego campus.
The nonprofit genomic research institute announced the sale of its Maryland property yesterday to BioMed Realty Trust (NYSE: [[ticker:BMR]]) a San Diego-based real estate developer that specializes in life sciences buildings. In its statement, the Venter Institute said it will lease back the building from BioMed under a renewable, 10-year lease, and plans to continue its research there “indefinitely.”
J. Craig Venter
The Venter Institute, which was founded in late 2004, employs about 300 scientists and staff in Rockville and about 100 in San Diego. Its namesake, genomic pioneer J. Craig Venter, also is the founding CEO at Synthetic Genomics, the San Diego-based startup developing algae-based biofuels that was the chief beneficiary of $600 million in funding from ExxonMobil that was announced last summer. His co-founders include Juan Enriquez of Boston’s Excel Venture Management and Hamilton Smith, the microbiologist and Nobel laureate.
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
View all posts by Bruce V. Bigelow
