Bayer to shutter San Francisco analysis hub after 10-year stretch
After more than 10 years as a research center in San Francisco, Bayer is leaving the city to concentrate its research activities in Boston.
“In order to optimally use our resources and carefully leverage internal and external innovation potential worldwide, we have decided to consolidate our research innovation activities in the USA in the Boston, MA area, where we are working on the Kendall Square project in. invest Cambridge, “said a Bayer spokesman on Tuesday evening in an email.
“As a result of this decision, we will close our Open Innovation Center-North America West in Mission Bay, San Francisco in accordance with the end of the lease for this facility,” added the spokesman.
The San Francisco Business Times first reported the site’s impending closure on Monday, noting that the company’s lease for the space expires in October.
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Germany-based Bayer settled in San Francisco in May 2010 and relocated 65 researchers to a space vacated by Pfizer near the University of San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus. In 2012, the company opened its Mission Bay CoLaborator, a 6,000-square-foot incubator in the same building. The incubator has now been expanded to 30,000 square meters.
When Bayer’s lease on the space expires, the companies that have settled in the incubator will be without homes. Bayer is working “with the CoLaborator companies to ensure a smooth transition to future locations of their choice,” said the spokesman.
The company’s own workforce at the site has shrunk to just 20 as a result of the relocation of research projects between different locations, the spokesman said, adding: “The work of this team will be integrated into the work of other Bayer teams around the world.”
In April, Bayer announced the impending closure to its employees and encouraged those affected to apply for other positions within the company, including nearly 100 biotech positions at the Berkeley site across the bay.
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The Berkeley site is home to Bayer’s global production center for hemophilia A products, but could contain a lot more at some point. The company is seeking approval from Berkeley executives for a 30-year plan to add 1 million square feet of manufacturing, research, and office space to the site, the San Francisco Business Times reported in April. It is planned to use the site for the production of drugs such as protein therapeutics as well as cell and gene therapies.
