Gilead Sciences is headquartered in Foster City, California
By Joshua Burd
Biopharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences has leased nearly 100,000 square feet at a Parsippany office campus, with plans to open a highly anticipated East Coast hub by early next year.
The company, which is based in Foster City, California, said it will occupy two floors for a total of 96,300 square feet at 369 Interpace Parkway, part of the Latitude complex just south of Interstate 80. It will do so under a lease with Vision Real Estate Partners and Rubenstein Partners LP, which have spearheaded a sweeping overhaul of the two-building, 700,000-square-foot property aimed at modernizing one of the state’s best-known suburban office locations.
Gilead plans to open the new space in the first quarter of 2023, according to Hayley Home, the company’s director of public affairs. It’s also slated to make significant operational and capital investments “to ensure the site reflects Gilead’s corporate standards of a modernized and inclusive workspace” for its employees in the New Jersey area, she said.
Newmark’s David Simson and Todd Ward represented both parties in the deal, which brings another major tenant to the Latitude campus. Vision and Rubenstein assembled the complex in 2018 after two separate acquisitions, setting out to unify and transform the former Morris Corporate Center IV east and west buildings with a series of high-profile upgrades.
That plan focused on creating hospitality-driven, cutting-edge amenity spaces with an East Coast to West Coast design theme and collaborative spaces inspired by American cities, along with a plan to connect Latitude’s two, five-story symmetrical wings through a central glass atrium. Those efforts yielded a new 187,500-square-foot, long-term lease with Reckitt Benckiser Group, the multinational consumer goods company, which expanded and extended its existing commitment at the site, plus a new 39,810-square-foot lease with Sax LLP, the prominent accounting firm.
Representatives for both Vision and Newmark declined to comment Wednesday.
Gilead — which made news at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic for its antiviral drug remdesivir — focuses on preventing and treating life-threatening diseases, including HIV, viral hepatitis and cancer, boasting more than three decades of history. The company in 2020 acquired Morris Plains-based Immunomedics and laid off more than 100 employees related to the site’s manufacturing operation, but soon detailed plans to retool and grow its workforce in the state.
To that end, company executive Joydeep Ganguly recently told ROI-NJ that Gilead planned to not only keep its remaining 150 employees in New Jersey, but add to them in a variety of non-manufacturing jobs. He indicated at the time that Gilead was looking for a site near the existing Morris Plains location in order to accommodate its existing workforce.
In an email Wednesday, Home said Gilead’s new office space “will focus on corporate functions at a variety of levels, such as medical affairs, regulatory affairs, operations, engineering, quality and supply chain.” It will also be “one of the largest non-manufacturing investments we have made in a physical U.S. site outside of our Foster City headquarters,” she added.
Leases by accounting firm, consumer goods giant mark auspicious start for revamped Parsippany campus
