Dublin City Council recently gave its blessing for City Hall to provide SunCal with a letter of support in the troubled Southern Californian developer‘s bid to land the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL)’s second campus. If SunCal succeeds in bringing LBNL’s new campus to Dublin, CA, the 2-million-square-foot project would be built across from the East Dublin BART Station at Camp Parks, within five miles of technology giants such as Sybase, Oracle, and Roche. The Camp Parks project’s initial phase has been moving forward somewhat sluggishly as SunCal continues to work with the U.S. Army on finalizing their land exchange agreement. A portion of the Dublin Crossing site is currently undergoing a $1.5M toxic soil cleanup that is expected to be completed this year.

Located over the hills above UC Berkeley, the current laboratory campus stands at 1.8 million gross square feet with no more room to accommodate the growing national laboratory. Most of the LBNL employees are on-site in the Berkeley hills, but roughly 20% are off-site at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in Emeryville, the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in Walnut Creek, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) in Oakland, and the Life Sciences Division (LSD) in West Berkeley. Re-uniting the various satellite campuses dispersed throughout the East Bay onto one location forms an important part of LBNL’s long-term growth strategy. According to LBNL Chief Operating Officer Jim Krupnick, co-locating research is a goal of the Lab and is important to achieving optimal operations.

Dublin would make a good home for LBNL’s second campus. Within walking distance to the East Dublin BART Station, the Camp Parks location has sufficient land to meet the 2-million-square-foot land requirement needed to accommodate LBNL’s 30-50-year growth projections. The City of Dublin is a thriving community with low crime and plenty of amenities.

“In addition to the site attributes, Dublin sits in the Tri-Valley region of the Bay Area which is the home to two other national labs – Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Labs,” wrote Dublin Mayor Tim Sbranti in a letter of support for the proposed Dublin development. “This region was recently designated as an Innovation Hub by the State of California. This designation is to create green technologies in this region.”

The one major strike against Dublin is its distance from the current campus in the Berkeley Hills. Listed on the very top of LBNL’s hard requirements is that the new campus must be within 25 minutes of drive time from the current campus. Although the East Dublin BART Station is within walking distance from the proposed site for LBNL’s second campus, no BART train currently runs directly to the Berkeley station from Dublin.

While Dublin falls short in the distance requirement, some of the other locations under consideration have their own challenges. The City of Richmond, for example, is plagued by relatively high crime rates, while the City of Alameda is not within walking distance of a BART station. The City of Richmond is the current front-runner with three possible locations and land already owned by University of California (UC).

LBNL will be announcing its short list of potential sites by the end of March 2011. The final site selection is expected by June 2011. The new campus could be ready for move-in by as early as 2015. If LBNL chooses Dublin for its second campus, Dublin City Council may need to revisit the approved plans for the Dublin Crossing/Camp Parks project. The current plans include a significant amount of residential development as part of a village concept.

LBNL is one of the top 25 employers in the Bay Area with 5,600 jobs locally and an annual Bay Area economic impact of $700M. As a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by UC, LBNL works to provide solutions for the most urgent scientific challenges such as developing sustainable energy and addressing climate change.