Foster City-based biotech Illumina plans to exit part of its 360,000-square-foot campus in San Mateo County and divest some of its other real estate in San Diego.
The company is weighing options for the entire Foster City campus, which is being developed by Blackstone’s BioMed Realty, according to the company. San Francisco Business Times. The entire campus is worth about $186 million.
The company will exit the entire 625,000-square-foot research facility in San Diego, another BioMed facility that was completed in 2017.
Illumina is laying off staff, resulting in a charge of between $25 million and $35 million.
In total, the company and its subsidiaries lease 540,000 square feet in the Bay Area.
The cost cuts follow a bitter proxy fight between Chief Executive Francis DeSouza and investor Carl Icahn. Shareholders voted to remove chairman John Thompson, though de Souza survived a proxy fight.
In April, Illumina said it would cut costs by more than $100 million over the next year to boost shareholder morale.
Illumina is the latest Silicon Valley company to lay off workers. Last month, Google listed about 1.4 million square feet of land in Mountain View and Sunnyvale for sublease.
— Isabella Farr
