Idealab Pursuing Plans to Build Expanded Pasadena Headquarters
Idealab, the prolific business incubator that has nurtured some of the Internet’s best-known companies, is pursuing plans to build a vast headquarters campus a few blocks south from its current home in Old Pasadena.
The rapidly growing firm would build far more than the 160,000 square feet of space it leases in several locations in Pasadena, according to people familiar with Idealab’s plans. The 13-acre site is on part of the Ambassador College campus that developer Legacy Partners has agreed to purchase for $100 million and transform into a large commercial and residential development.
A major expansion by Idealab and its affiliates would cement Pasadena’s position as a center for high technology. In addition to Idealab, Pasadena is home to Internet service provider EarthLink Network, Caltech and a number of biotechnology start-ups.
“The ability to keep Idealab and have them expand . . . is nothing but a home run for the city,” said developer Timothy H. Walker of Los Angeles-based Maguire Partners.
Officials familiar with the negotiations say the site bounded by Green Street on the north and Del Mar Boulevard on the south is Idealab’s first choice, but that a final agreement is not imminent. Before Idealab can act, Legacy Partners must finish the entitlement process with the city before it completes its purchase of the entire Ambassador College campus from the Worldwide Church of God.
Idealab would then purchase the eastern portion of the property immediately south of Old Pasadena from Legacy and demolish many of the buildings to make way for a new headquarters.
Legacy, meanwhile, would build a large residential project on the western campus, which includes many of the college’s most prominent buildings. Legacy has said it will preserve Ambassador Auditorium, four historic mansions and other significant structures.
“We are working to finalize an agreement,” said Bill Shubin of Legacy Partners. “We are interested in what they are contemplating but it’s not a deal ‘til you get a contract signed.”
Officials from Idealab declined to comment.
Four-year-old Idealab is bursting at the seams. Its employees are crammed into the incubator’s headquarters, a converted warehouse one block north of Old Pasadena’s bustling Colorado Boulevard with concrete floors, glass walls and desks fashioned from doors that straddle filing cabinets.
After one of its offspring, Web search engine GoTo.com, vacated the space next door, Idealab quickly filled it up. Altogether, Idealab and its spinoffs have well over 1,000 employees in Pasadena.
The incubator has leased overflow space across the street at Parsons Corp., an engineering and construction company, as well as two floors in an office building in Pasadena’s South Lake Avenue District. Idealab has also opened satellite offices in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston and London.
As Idealab’s offspring mature, they move out of the incubator and into their own facilities. Idealab’s most famous spinoffs include online retailer EToys, Web search engine GoTo.com and free Internet service provider NetZero.
The firm has been wooed by developers interested in using Idealab as an anchor tenant for proposed new developments in Pasadena and the Westside of Los Angeles, according to real estate brokers.
“Idealab is obviously one of the crown jewel tenants of Pasadena,” said Nico Vilgiate, a real estate broker with Insignia/ESG. “They have a tremendous reputation in the marketplace for creating and delivering state-of-the-art new-media companies.”
