Advanced Bionics to Buy 25 Acres at Rye Canyon Park

Medical device manufacturer Advanced Bionics Inc. agreed to buy 25 acres of land at the North Campus at Rye Canyon Business Park in Valencia for $9.5 million. It also signed a six-year, $5.5-million lease for 122,579 square feet of office and research space at the business park.

The company plans to relocate to Valencia from its headquarters in Sylmar.

Advanced Bionics also plans to build a 500,000-square-foot, $75-million headquarters to accommodate a work force that is expected to grow from 300 employees now to 1,000 in the next five years, according to Irvine-based Legacy Partners Commercial Inc., which is developing the 19-building Rye Canyon North Campus office and industrial complex.

The 200-acre North Campus is part of what had been a 377-acre Lockheed Martin Corp. campus. Legacy Partners Commercial, in partnership with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., bought the site in May 1998. The existing 425,000 square feet of the North Campus is former Lockheed space that Legacy has renovated. With the Advanced Bionics lease, about 70% of the North Campus is now leased, according to Bill Shubin, Legacy vice president of acquisitions and development.

Legacy is developing its South Campus at Rye Canyon on the remaining 177 acres, where the company began construction earlier this year on three new buildings totaling 216,000 square feet that are expected to be completed by the end of the year, Shubin said.

Jim Linn of Grubb & Ellis Co. represented Advanced Bionics in the lease and the land purchase; Doug Sonderegger and Craig Peters of CB Richard Ellis Services Inc. represented Legacy Partners in both transactions.

Advanced Bionics, a maker of ear implants for the hearing-impaired, was founded by Alfred Mann, chairman of the Southern California Biomedical Council and founder of several other biomedical firms, including Sylmar-based insulin pump maker MiniMed Inc. and heart pacemaker manufacturer Pacesetter Inc.