Biotech Office Park Plan Gets CSUN Backing

CSUN administrators endorsed a tentative agreement Friday to transform nearly half of the university’s North Campus into a biotechnical office park, saying the new complex eventually could generate up to $800,000 annually for the school.

Under terms to be finalized in coming months, Sylmar businessman Alfred Mann will construct four office buildings and a conference center on 28 acres once used for the San Fernando Valley Fair and occasional races.

The university’s football stadium and the North Campus library annex would have to be relocated to make room for the new buildings under the plan. In exchange, Mann’s company, MiniMed Inc., is to “assist the university in its educational mission” by providing internships, work-study programs for students and job opportunities for graduates.

The biotech park is part of a broader plan for North Campus, where CSUN administrators also hope to attract film-production houses, among other entertainment industry businesses.

“People are very excited about the relationship between your company and the university,” CSUN President Blenda Wilson told Mann during a meeting Friday. “It’s a total win-win.”

Mann said he plans to relocate MiniMed--best known for a subcutaneous glucose sensor that helps diabetes patients regulate their blood-sugar levels--as early as the spring of next year, with construction to start this May. He said he hopes to move other companies he owns to the site, and that the various enterprises could employ more than 1,000 people when the biotech park is completed in about five years.

“The interrelationship between our staff and the university will be extremely valuable for everyone,” Mann said.

Business and community groups that had opposed an earlier plan for a North Campus retail center said they welcomed the biotech park because it would complement the academic mission of the university and should not generate the same amount of traffic as a shopping center and movie theaters.

“We felt that it’s as close as we are going to get to pure academic use,” said Tony Pasano, president of the Sherwood Forest Homeowners Assn. “It would benefit the students as well as the university financially.”

Mann’s plans involve two phases, the first involving 12 acres and the second taking up the remaining 16 acres. Four two-story office buildings are to be situated around the conference center, which would be available to the university. The entire complex would occupy between 500,000 and 750,000 square feet.

Mann said he intends to break ground on the first building, planned to house MiniMed, in May, and that it could be occupied in the spring of 1999.

But before any of that can occur, various legal agreements need to be approved. The board of directors of the North Campus-University Park Development Corp. ordered its staff members Friday to draw up a 40-year sublease for MiniMed or one of its affiliates and have it ready by the first week in February.

But the lease won’t take effect until May, after the CSU board of trustees is expected to grant its own master lease on the state-owned property to CSUN.

Clearly eager to move the project forward, Mann warned the CSUN administrators against delays, noting he had been considering two other sites--including one in Los Angeles--before he learned about the North Campus possibility. Indeed, the tentative agreement discussed at Friday’s meeting allows Mann to cancel the lease if he is unable to break ground on the first building by June 1.

“We aren’t going to wait forever to build our building,” Mann told the North Campus corporation’s board of directors. “We need to break ground on May 15 [the day after the CSU trustees’ meeting], or we are going to have to do something different.”

Mann said MiniMed’s current facility will only allow the company to produce about 2 million glucose sensors annually, but the new North Campus building would allow workers to boost that to 40 million.

“We need more space,” Mann said. “This is the priority. Our need is very significant and urgent.”