Following an extensive evaluation, the University of California, manager of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), today released a list of six potential sites for the Lab’s proposed second campus. Dublin, CA was not selected.

In its bid for Berkeley Lab’s second campus project, the City of Dublin proposed the 180-acre site at Camp Parks. Given the rejection by the Berkeley Lab, this parcel, commonly known as Dublin Crossing, will now become a transit-oriented development within walking distance of a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station. This plan will include 1,500 new homes, parks, and several hundred thousand square feet of retail, office, hotel, and industrial uses.

The University of California received more than 20 responses when a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) was released earlier this year. The proposed second campus is an effort to consolidate existing laboratory programs that are currently in leased spaces spread throughout the Bay Area, and to provide the Lab long-term cost savings.

After careful evaluation of the merits of each submittal, the sites being considered further include:

• Alameda Point, in the city of Alameda;
• Berkeley Aquatic Park West, located in West Berkeley;
• Brooklyn Basin, located in Oakland;
• Emeryville/Berkeley (includes properties currently occupied by the Lab in Emeryville and West Berkeley);
• Golden Gate Fields, spanning the cities of Berkeley and Albany;
• Richmond Field Station, a site currently owned by the University of California.

“We had tremendous response to our call for qualifications,” says Berkeley Lab Director Paul Alivisatos. “We really want to thank all the cities and developers that presented their ideas. The large number of visionary responses created by so many communities in the East Bay is an impressive reminder of the value that our region places on science in service of society. And now that we have identified our top candidates, we look forward to working with them as we move closer to selecting a preferred site.”

Site finalists were chosen based on their ability to meet multiple criteria in the RFQ including a location within 20 to 25 minutes of the original campus, land capacity to accommodate potential future growth, and easy access to public transportation and other amenities.

Most of Berkeley Lab’s 4,200 employees work at its main site, but about 20 percent of them are dispersed in leased facilities around the East Bay, including at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in Emeryville, the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in Walnut Creek, and the Lab’s life science facilities in Berkeley.

If this project were to move forward, a second campus would provide substantial scientific benefits by allowing researchers, presently scattered throughout the various off-lab sites, to interact more directly with each other and with faculty and students from throughout the UC system.

While the University’s original intent was to identify a preferred site by this summer, it became clear during this very competitive process that the next steps of due diligence, site inspections, and negotiations will extend that timeline.

A decision on a preferred site will likely occur in late November with occupancy scheduled for mid-2016.