Revolution Medicines nears 700K-sf lease at former Google hub
A pre-launch drug bet would more than double the biotech's Redwood City footprint and reset the comp for vacant Peninsula tech campuses.
Revolution Medicines is nearing a 700,000-square-foot lease at Pacific Shores Center, a 106-acre waterfront campus at the end of Seaport Boulevard in Redwood City, a commitment that would more than double the biotech's footprint in the city and hand a new purpose to property Google bought in 2014 and has not occupied since July 2024. The Silicon Valley Business Journal reported the talks, Connect CRE carried them this week, and everything remains pending — the reporting says near, not signed, and includes no lease terms or launch date.
Google used the campus as a major Peninsula hub before leaving it in July 2024 and selling it, leaving the asset in transition. A Revolution lease would install a drug developer as its defining tenant — a new identity for a campus whose previous one walked away.
The expansion is keyed to daraxonrasib, a pancreatic cancer drug Revolution is preparing to launch that could generate billions of dollars in annual sales, and the space is meant to support that commercialization. The landlord would be underwriting an outcome that has not yet landed: the tenant's ability to pay rides on a launch calendar, not a headcount plan, which is a different credit question from the leases Google signed at the same property.
A biotech downturn has left much of the Bay Area's new lab space struggling to find tenants, and this commitment would land on an existing office campus instead of new lab construction. Institutional-scale demand for a waterfront campus while fresh lab product sits idle is the gap this lease would test.
A 700,000-square-foot commitment would give an owner a modeled income stream tied to a named drug, an underwrite that resets a valuation and something lenders can bring to a refinancing. As this publication has argued, office has moved from mark-to-market to trade-to-trade; the distress side shows up in trackers of loans returning to lenders, and the demand side, if this deal closes, would arrive at 700,000 square feet. That becomes the comp for every vacant tech campus on the Peninsula.