Mesa West Capital recently provided Longfellow Real Estate Partners with a $178 million first mortgage loan to recapitalize costs associated with its recent acquisition and fund the planned repositioning of the San Mateo Bay Center, a 235,911-square-foot office campus in San Mateo. A portion of the proceeds from the five-year floating rate loan will be used by Longfellow to convert the property from a conventional office to a life science and laboratory facility.

The two seven-story office towers located at 901 and 951 Mariner’s Island Blvd. were built in 1984. San Mateo Bay Center is located in the mid-Peninsula Foster City/San Mateo life science market with a life sciences inventory of nearly 2 million square feet, anchored by the 1.4 million-square-foot world headquarters campus for Gilead Sciences. 

“The property is located in one of the strongest life science markets in the Bay Area, one of the most talent-rich life science environments in the world,” said Josh Westerberg, director, who along with principal Ronnie Gul, led Mesa West’s origination team. “Longfellow is a premier developer and operator in the life science sector and has built a vertically integrated team with a proven ability to execute.”

Since its founding in 2009, Boston-based Longfellow has built a portfolio of approximately 6 million square feet located in life science clusters including Boston, San Francisco, San Diego and Raleigh/Durham.

“San Mateo is home to one of the most rapidly emerging life science communities in the country,” said Adam Sichol, CEO of Longfellow. “The loan from Mesa West Capital will enable us to transform the San Mateo Bay Center into a premier life science campus that will best serve the region’s leading bio innovation companies.”

Ramsey Daya and  Chris Moritz of Newmark arranged the financing, while Steven Golubchik represented the seller in the transaction. Mark Osher with Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP represented Mesa West Capital on the transaction.