Stanford University architect and Director of Campus Planning David Lenox and Wilson Meany Director of Asset Management Sarah MacIntyre. Photo: Bisnow/Julie Littman
Office campuses are becoming less isolated as more cities and companies want to be on campuses with housing that are close to transit and offer retail amenities. That has pushed landlords along the San Francisco Peninsula to reconsider what mixed-use campuses should look like and how best to create campuses that help corporate tenants attract the best and brightest employees.
Corporate campus planning in the Bay Area is part of a regional and global trend toward increased mixed-use communities.
“Land uses that used to be somewhat isolated … are now becoming much more merged,” Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Director Peter Kindel said. “That is the whole objective in Asia and I’m seeing it in Europe as well. There are much more rich, dense mixed-use environments that move away from an automobile focus and more toward a pedestrian focus.”
The ever-growing Bay Area life science market has put pressure on the office space Wilson Meany has in the Peninsula, Wilson Meany Director of Asset Management Sarah MacIntyre said during Bisnow’s recent Evolution of San Francisco Peninsula event.
The developer has found ways to elevate its Bay Meadows mixed-use campus in San Mateo to compete with life sciences campuses, which often have high-end amenities on-site.
“Bay Meadows took the corporate campus and turned it inside out,” MacIntyre said. Bay Meadows, a former horse racetrack, is an 83-acre mixed-use site that will have 780K SF of office, 1,100 housing units with 15% affordable, 40K SF of retail and 18 acres of public parks.
MacIntyre said Bay Meadows has the feel of an adult collegiate atmosphere where common areas are shared by office users and residents. “[The campus feel] is not just inside the walls of the office building, it’s everywhere,” MacIntyre said.