Scripps Clinic Buys 21 Acres to Develop Biotech, Research Facility

Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation has acquired nearly 21 acres of raw land across from its existing plant for $16.1 million to develop a biotech and research facility.

The new property nearly doubles the size of the existing 25-acre campus on Torrey Pines Mesa, giving the booming institution room to grow into the next century.

Plans call for construction to begin as early as this year on the plant, which is expected to include an 80,000-square-foot laboratory housing a bio-organic chemistry center and a department of neuropharmacology, which will study the functions of the brain and nervous system.

A facility for parking, additional research and clinical buildings, a conference center as well as day-care facilities for the children of employees are also being considered, Scripps officials said.

Opportune Time

Dr. Charles C. Edwards, Scripps Clinic president and chief executive officer, said the land purchase “could not have come at a more opportune time,” noting that the clinic is bulging at the seams after a period of rapid expansion on the existing site, which stretches along the western edge of North Torrey Pines Road.

“When we moved to Torrey Pines Mesa in the mid-1979s, it seemed that there was more than enough space for all the growth we could imagine,” Edwards said in a prepared statement. “However, it took less than a decade to fill it with new health-care facilities and research laboratories.”

Scripps officials have long considered the undeveloped property on the eastern side of Torrey Pines Road the only possible outlet for expansion of the grounds, which are flanked on three sides by offices, a hotel complex and the Torrey Pines golf course.

The new site will be named “The Lusk Research Campus” in recognition of a $3.5-million gift from John and William Lusk, owners of an Irvine-based real estate and development firm.

The southern half of the grounds will be called “The Lita Annenberg Hazen Science Center” to honor a $3-million donation from Hazen, a member of the Scripps Clinic Board of Trustees who has made many contributions through the years to medicine and the arts.

Both the Lusks and Hazen have been longtime contributors to the institution.

John Lusk donated nearly $150,000 in recent years to the facility and has been a member of the research council since 1984. His son, William, has joined his father for many Scripps Clinic functions. Hazen, a resident of Los Angeles and New York, joined the research council in 1983, and four years later made a $1-million gift to establish an endowed chair in immunochemistry.

Part of Campaign

Edwards said the contributions from the Lusks and Hazen were part of a campaign to raise the money for the land from private sources. That effort is being led by developer Ernest Hahn, a Scripps Clinic board member and Rancho Santa Fe resident, and has garnered more than $10 million.

Scripps Clinic researchers hope the neuropharmacology department can make inroads in the understanding of brain functioning, determining how both therapeutic and abused drugs can influence neural cells and tissues. Eventually, the department could help develop new drugs in collaboration with the new bio-organic chemistry center.

That center will aid in the research into small organic molecules, focusing on their specific three-dimensional structures rather than their chemical properties. Such research is the cornerstone of the revolutionary concept of “rational” drug design, the creation of pharmaceuticals based on a full knowledge of the molecular interactions taking place within the body.