Mayor Ed Lee announced that life sciences company Illumina, Inc. is opening new offices, including a state-of-the-art research facility, in San Francisco’s fast-growing life sciences innovation cluster in Mission Bay. Illumina, whose leading sequencing and array technologies fuel advances in life sciences research, translational and consumer genomics, and molecular diagnostics, has signed a lease for a flagship site at 499 Illinois Street in Mission Bay, which is owned by Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.

"I am thrilled to welcome Illumina to San Francisco’s life sciences community," said Mayor Lee. "The addition of Illumina to Mission Bay’s roster of innovative life sciences companies speaks to the value of the collaborative environment of our biotech cluster and extends San Francisco’s hard earned reputation as the Innovation Capital of the World."

When its facility opens, Illumina will be the anchor tenant at Alexandria Real Estate Equities’ 499 Illinois Street building. The 10-year lease for approximately 97,700 square feet represents 45 percent of the total space in the 219,600 square foot building.

"The new San Francisco office will expand Illumina’s Bay Area footprint and increase visibility in a key customer and talent market," said Illumina President and CEO Jay Flatley. "This expanded presence will help us in our hiring and collaboration efforts, and support Illumina’s rapid growth as we pursue our mission to unlock the power of the genome and improve human health."

Mission Bay includes 303 acres of land between the San Francisco Bay and Interstate 280 and was designed from the ground up to be a leading center for sciences and innovation. At full build out, Mission Bay will accommodate 6,000 units of housing (28 percent affordable), 4.4 million square feet of office and R&D space, a 57-acre UCSF research campus and 550-bed medical center, 500,000 square feet of retail, a new hotel, 49 acres of new public open space, a new 500-student public school, a new public library, a new fire and police stations and other community facilities. Mission Bay anchoring institutions include the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), Gladstone Institutes and the Veterans Administration. Illumina will be the 130th life sciences company in San Francisco, 56 of which are in Mission Bay. 

Today’s news follows Mayor Lee’s recent announcements of Rock Health’s move to Mission Bay and the announcement of a new incubator called QB3@953 – the incubator is San Francisco’s 6th and will provide space for 20-30 new life sciences companies.