NASA, UC-Berkeley Announce Space Center at Moffett Field

NASA, the University of California at Berkeley and SKS Partners have announced a joint venture to create Berkeley Space Center at NASA Research Park, a $2 billion public-private “innovation hub” on 36 acres at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in Mountain View.

Developers described the agreement among the federal space agency, a state university and a private company as a first-of-its-kind deal.

“We are at a major pivot point in space exploration,” said Ames Director Eugene Tu, at a press conference announcing the development on Monday. “Unlike the last half century, the future of space exploration is going to be much more dependent on and reliant on partnerships.”

The announcement is the culmination of two decades of discussions and planning between NASA and UC Berkeley, with SKS on board as the development partner for the last four years, according to SKS co-founder and Managing Director Dan Kingsley.

The next two years will go toward creating an environmental impact report and designing and marketing the project to potential public and private sector tenants. Construction is likely about three years away, with the full build out of 1.4 million square feet of office and lab space and “functional landscaping” expected to take over a decade and $2 billion to complete.

UC Berkeley will occupy only about 10 percent of that R&D square footage, said Darek DeFreece, the university’s executive director for the project, with the rest expected to be leased by companies and government entities in fields associated with the aerospace industry, including urban air mobility, private space tourism, remote sensing, firefighting, machine learning, AI, data science and robotics. He expects about 1 million square feet will be rented by private companies.

Financing for “the world’s new home for the private space industry” will “evolve by phase,” Kingsley said, declining to name any specific capital partners.

“Financing is never easy but we are confident that the demand for the project will allow us to be able to sign leases in advance of constructing any of the buildings, which will make the financing much more manageable,” he said.

SKS will rely on its partnership with Berkeley to help determine which tenants would make the most sense to include in the project, Kingsley said.

DeFreece added that the university was “very intentional” about “de-leveraging risk” through private partnerships, to ensure that “we’re not putting the public’s money at risk.”

The vast majority of the land will be used for offices, R&D labs or open space, with a few retail or restaurant spots. The residential component of the project will also be fairly small, and concentrated in the triangular parcel’s southwest corner.

DeFreece said the initial plans call for about 300 units that could be market-rate, or for student and faculty housing. The master plan for the project says it will have 240 units, with 140 for short-term use by staff, visiting researchers, academics and office tenants. In addition, 100 long-term units will house primarily students and faculty.

UC-Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said she could imagine a future wherein rather than going abroad to Italy or Spain their junior years, students spend a semester in Silicon Valley. The university just announced its College of Computing Data Science and Society, the first new UC-Berkeley college in 50 years, and Christ said those students and others at Berkeley would make perfect interns for the companies the developers expect to attract to the center.

“This is a wonderful neighborhood with ample room for a second world-class university,” she said, referencing nearby Stanford, “and a pressing need for a palette that includes not just red, but a little blue and gold as well.”