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As part of a joint venture with the University of California at Berkeley and real estate developer SKS Partners, NASA is preparing to launch a $2 billion research center at Moffett Field, with the intent to advance new frontiers of knowledge and technologies for future generations of scientists and explorers.
“Ever since NASA took over stewardship of Moffett Field, after the naval air station was closed in the mid-90s, we have envisioned a major academic campus to complement the federal industry,” said NASA Center Director Eugene Tu at a press conference Monday morning.
“And we’re building it right here in the heart of Silicon Valley,” he added.
The proposed development – known as the Berkeley Space Center – will sit on 36 acres of the former military base, with 1.4 million square feet of mixed-use space largely dedicated to research and development laboratories, as well as space designated for classrooms, offices and retail.
The venture is a unique opportunity to bring federal, private and academic sectors together, at an unprecedented scale, said UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ. The collaborations will fuel new research and cutting-edge technologies, as well as interdisciplinary and educational opportunities for students looking to enter a diverse range of fields, from aeronautics to space medicine, she said.
Housing will be part of the development of the campus, said Darek DeFreece, director of the Moffett Field Project for UC Berkeley. “The ground-lease currently contemplates 300 units of housing that could be market-rate,” he said, adding that the project intends to build faculty and student housing as well as short-term tenancy options for visiting staff, researchers and affiliates.
The site plan also devotes about 18 acres to outdoor space in order to support physical and mental well-being, said Daniel Kingsley, managing partner at SKS Partners.
But the space also provides opportunities for what DeFreece called “accidental collisions,” referring to the chance encounters of when people bump into each other and new collaborative partnerships and ideas are born.
With the campus addition, the site will be more open to the public too. The area largely has been a desert for community engagement, DeFreece said, but with the possibility of community classes, workshops and talks, everybody in Mountain View can be a student.
The project also serves as an opportunity to pioneer large-scale sustainable building designs and construction practices, Kingsley said. To minimize its carbon impact, the project proposes to follow a number of green initiatives that include LEED building certifications, on-site treatment and retention of storm water and the installation of low-carbon energy sources as well as other practices.
While short on details, financing for the project will roll out in phases, Kingsley said, noting that tenants will have opportunities to sign leases in advance of construction.
To mitigate the financial risk of the project, DeFreece, who was speaking for UC Berkeley, said the institution was being very deliberate with its spending and looking at private financing so that public money was not put at risk.
To date, UC Berkeley has contributed $1 million to the Berkeley Space Center; if approved, the project likely will incur annual expenses of approximately $750,000 per year to support faculty, staff and students, according to a press release.
The university expects that the project will generate $40 million in annual revenue, from several project sources, that includes funding from grants, industry partners and real estate revenue, the press release stated.
Construction for the Berkeley Space Center is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2026.
and so now, good old UC Berkeley is going to partner to build 1)office + R and D, 2) “market rate” housing, …
And no build of community public school facilities, or operations revenue?
FEDERAL LAND is really hard to extract school funding from. It might be possible by ? general property tax on the private buildings (not the land), parcel tax PSF on the private buildings, school (building) bonds against the value of the private buildings.
– check me – but I think private leases of public land, and private building on public land Do Not Escape the property tax. Something about ‘private interest’.
Hope this brings good jobs. Still this puts the burden on the City of Mountain View to address housing, transportation, and public services, as all involved on the new campus will not be living in a closed bubble!
Sounds like a terrific research partnership, alas pushing all the impacts (housing, emissions, transportation and public services (inc.school)…) onto Mountain View.
If the Berkeley Space Center is not providing any remediation …. can we petition the US Post Office to change their address to SunnyVale? 🙂
Could you print a map, in any follow up articles? Where do they plan to put it in the Moffett area?
How come there is nothing from MV City Council on this?
well just what we DON’T need: more high paying jobs, bringing in more people with too much money bidding up housing prices, putting demands on the schools and water supply. Can’t they do this in Modesto or say Huntsville, AL?
I’d rather have it here, with the population and Silicon Valley gestalt, than in the Reactionary State of AL. The public impacts can be mitigated. There were federal impact compensations to the Whisman School District when naval-air families at Moffett Naval Air Field sent their kids to that (old) district. The giant GOLF COURSE! Ah, is that the best use of that green space? Probably not if ‘a fuller community’ is out there.
Swap Tees 4 Trees!
So SORRY! I realized I made a very major mistake in my first posting. There is No Way the school districts can tax ANY University of California ‘education’ linked buildings. EXEMPT as an education institution! Just like Stanford University escapes regular Santa Clara County or Palo Alto regular taxation.
Too bad, a comming century of legal/fiscal fighting about special Mitigation measures, and almost always delays in the public entities getting $,$$$,$$$ revenue that they IMO rightly deserve.