Developer retooling plan for Costa Verde Center near UTC

Life science real estate developer Alexandria Real Estate Equities is retooling its redevelopment plan for the shuttered Costa Verde Center just opposite Westfield UTC in light of the recently adopted community plan that allows for high-density housing on the 13.9-acre site.

The developer has scrapped its former plan and is working on a new vision for the former strip mall, sandwiched between La Jolla Village Drive and Nobel Drive at 8560 Genesee Ave., Dan Ryan, co-president of Alexandria, told the Union-Tribune in late June.

“We’re responding to the new planning document … and so we’re restudying that whole site,” Ryan said at the time. “We’re reanalyzing the site based on the opportunities (in the new community plan).”

Alexandria may be ready to talk more openly about its reworked plan for the Costa Verde property at the end of the year, he said.

In July, the San Diego City Council approved the University Community Plan Update, laying the regulatory foundation for more than 30,000 additional residential units in the La Jolla-adjacent neighborhood. The plan, which goes into effect on Dec. 1, designates the Costa Verde property as a mixed-use, “urban village” site, allowing up to 218 residential units per acre alongside office and retail uses.

The rezone is directly linked to the property’s proximity to the on-site trolley station. The site is at the terminus of the UC San Diego Blue Line, where an elevated platform connects to both Westfield UTC on the west and the Costa Verde site on the east.

“The (community’s) highest density urban village designations are centered around the Executive Drive and UTC Trolley stations,” the new community plan states.

Although Alexandria specializes in constructing and managing research buildings, the developer is not selling the property, Ryan said in June.

Started in 1994, Pasadena-based Alexandria operates 42.1 million square feet of lab and office space spread across the nation’s top life science clusters, including Boston, the Bay Area and Seattle. The publicly traded real estate investment trust reported $37.8 billion in total assets at the end of June.

In San Diego, the life science developer’s portfolio includes 88 properties and 7.8 million square feet of space with holdings concentrated in Torrey Pines, University City and Sorrento Mesa. The firm is currently developing an additional 1.2 million square feet of space in the San Diego market.

Alexandria purchased Costa Verde Center for $125 million in January 2022 after working with the previous land owner to win approval for an urban job center complemented by community shops, restaurants and a hotel. The now-scuttled plan envisioned 400,000 square feet of office and lab space, a 200-room hotel and 178,000 square feet of retail space. The project was approved by the City Council in late 2020.

That plan never materialized. The neighborhood shopping center, once anchored by Bristol Farms, has since been closed and fenced off from public access. Only the McDonald’s and Chevron on Nobel Drive remain open.

Alexandria currently values the Costa Verde site at $135.6 million, according to a recent regulatory filing. The same filing notes that the developer is planning 537,000 square feet of total space at the site, but the project is not identified as a near-term or priority development.