Daily Business Report-March 3, 2020
Illustration courtesy of Cushman & Wakefield San Diego
Cushman & Wakefield Report:
San Diego has 9th highest concentration
of tech employment in the United States
As a percentage of total jobs, San Diego is home to the 9th highest concentration of tech employment in the U.S., according to a new report by Cushman & Wakefield San Diego.
Highlights of the report, “Tech Industry’s Impact on San Diego’s Office Market”:
- San Diego’s research institutions account for $4.6 billion in the local economy and are the core of the region’s $14.4 billion scientific R&D cluster. San Diego also has the second highest concentration of science and engineering professionals in the U.S. and has attracted $15.2 billion in venture capital in the last 10 years with $8.9 billion invested in healthcare/life sciences/medical devices sectors.
- With a complex military ecosystem, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and numerous research institutions, San Diego’s technology cluster has positioned the region as a hub for innovation in emerging sectors.
- San Diego’s tech economy is anchored by the life science ecosystem around UCSD in Torrey Pines and the telecommunications companies clustering around Qualcomm in Sorrento Mesa. Meanwhile, companies such as Illumina, Viasat and Nuvasive continue to expand their presence in the region.
- Apple occupied 97,000 square feet in Eastgate in the fourth quarter of 2019, and recently leased an additional 360,000 sf in Eastgate which it is anticipated to occupy in 2021.
- In 2019, the tech sector accounted for 18% or 1.5 msf of 8.4 msf total office space leased countywide across all industry sectors. Based on 2019 leasing, Eastgate and Sorrento Mesa attracted the most tech tenants.
- Over the last 10 years combined, tech tenants have leased 11.6 msf or 16% of total office space (73.7 msf) leased by all industry sectors combined countywide since 2010.
- Tech industry has added 28,800 jobs over the last eight years (2012-2019), averaging 3,600 per year or 3.1 percent annual growth. In 2020, tech employment sector is expected to grow at a combined growth rate of 2.0 percent (+2,700 jobs).
Click here for the full report
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Teen inventor of candy that cleans
your teeth to keynote OLP program
Teen inventor Alina Morse, 14-year-old creator of the #1 selling all-natural candy that cleans your teeth (Zolli Candy), is the keynote speaker for Maria Shriver’s 8th Architects of Change event today at the Academy of Our Lady of Peace, 4860 Oregon St., San Diego.
Following the event, Morse will exhibit at Anaheim’s Natural Products Expo West, showcasing her seven product lines, and introduces candy for every holiday season, from Mar. 4-6.
At age seven, while researching ways to create healthy candy she could have all the time, Morse invented Zollipops, the clean teen lollipops, and hit shelves in 2014 at age nine, with Southern California Whole Foods Markets as her first retailer.
Morse is a Michigan freshman high school student, the youngest INC. Magazine INC. 5000 CEO for 2019 as one of the fastest growing private companies, with three-year revenue growth of 696 percent.
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‘Community Station’ opens
at U.S.-Mexico border
by Inga Kiderra | UC San Diego
A mixed-use project almost 20 years in the making is now a real place that both people and some powerful ideas can call home. Among these is a UC San Diego “community station,” one of several field hubs in the San Diego-Tijuana region where the university and a local nonprofit collaborate closely on pressing social needs to make change on the ground.
The project is called “Living Rooms at the Border” and is situated in the historic heart of San Ysidro, a predominantly Latino community at the southernmost end of San Diego. It sits just blocks from Mexico and combines 10 units of affordable housing with critically needed space dedicated to both cultural activities and social services.
Designed by Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, the project was developed by local nonprofit Casa Familiar in partnership with UC San Diego and others. Architect Teddy Cruz is a professor of public culture and urbanism in the UC San Diego Division of Arts and Humanities. Fonna Forman is a political science professor in the Division of Social Sciences. Together, they direct the university’s Community Stations initiative out of the Center on Global Justice.
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Ocean Aero to deliver fleet of autonomous
marine vehicles to feds for testing program
Ocean Aero Inc., designer and builder of autonomous, underwater and surface vehicles (AUSVs), announced a multi-million-dollar agreement to deliver a variety of the company’s AUSV models to the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate for a ground-breaking research, evaluation, and testing program.
Ocean Aero will be delivering a mix of its Navigator and Discovery models and working closely with DHS and other program participants—the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, The University of Southern Mississippi, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and Cherokee Nation Strategic Programs.
Ocean Aero’s vehicles will be deployed in a wide range of ocean environments, providing a platform for the integration, testing, and evaluation of a variety of advanced sensors.
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Stos Partners acquires industrial
building in Miramar area for $11 million
Stos Partners, a privately held commercial real estate investment and management firm, in a joint venture with Boston-based private equity firm Long Wharf Capital, has acquired a 55,000 square-foot industrial asset in the Miramar submarket of San Diego in an off-market transaction. Stos Partners acquired the asset from a private seller for $11 million.
Current tenants include a print and sign company as well as Maketory, San Diego’s first manufacturing co-working facility, which offers a membership-based, multi-discipline manufacturing workspace that represents an innovative new business model in co-working. The property is located at 9431 Dowdy Drive. Stos Partners currently owns 16 properties spanning 265,000 square feet in the Miramar submarket.
Marc Lipschitz of Compass represented Stos Partners as the buyer in the acquisition.
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Agragene raises $1.2 million
in seed round financing
San Diego-based Agragene Inc., a sustainable agricultural technology company developing biological crop pest protection products, announced that it has raised $1.2 million in a seed financing round. The funding by Ospraie Ag Science, the venture arm of New York-based Ospraie Management, a commodities and basic industries firm, will expand field trials and commercialization of Agragene’s eco-friendly alternatives to chemical pesticides.
The seed round financing will fund the development and commercialization of Agragene’s Precision-Guided Sterile Insect Technology, an eco-friendly approach to engineer sterile male crop pests that mate with wild female crop pests. Flooding the field with a large ratio of sterile male spotted wing drosophila results in unfertilized insect eggs that produce no offspring and control the pest population. Applied via drone and more affordable than traditional chemical formulations, the products are safe for bees, birds and workers.
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Scientists design way to use harmless bacteria
to detect heavy metals in drinking water
When it comes to testing drinking water for dangerous contaminants, such as heavy metals like lead or cadmium, continuous testing directly from faucets people drink from is important. Yet, very little of this kind of water testing is done. A team from UC San Diego and the campus spinout Quantitative BioSciences is working to improve the situation.
“Water might be fine to drink, fine to drink, fine to drink…and then it’s not,” said UC San Diego bioengineering alumna Natalie Cookson as she explained the value of continuous monitoring of drinking water, as compared to sporadic water monitoring.
She hopes this work will produce affordable water testing systems that can be installed at the faucets that people actually drink from. The water that was leaving the treatment plant in Flint Michigan, for example, didn’t have dangerously high levels of lead. But by the time that same water poured from faucets of Flint residents, lead was in the water.
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Capt. Emily A. Cathey to Speak at Women’s Week 2020
A native of Statesville, N.C., Capt. Emily Cathey is a 1999 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and has served in a variety of sea and shore commands.
Cathey’s sea duty assignments include duty on cruisers, carriers, destroyers, patrol boats and littoral combat ships. She is respected by many for being the first female commanding officer aboard USS Independence.
At the encouragement of her mother, Emily went into the academy because she told her that everyone received the same pay, regardless of gender. After attending an all-girl boarding school, Emily had to choose between a regular college experience or the Naval Academy. She grew up in a family of public servants.
Emily has sailed around the world — from San Diego to Mumbai, India; from Norfolk to North Arabian Sea; in the Arabian Gulf; through both Panama and Suez Canals; down and around South America. She is also a mom, wife, Sister and daughter.
San Diego Women’s Week events are March 16-20. Everyone is invited, and tickets can be purchased at www.sdwomensweek.com.
