Breakthrough Properties Buys San Diego Life Sciences Campus for $159M
The three-building Muse campus is a few miles from Breakthrough’s Torrey Heights campus, which opened in September
By Nick Trombola February 4, 2025 2:29 pm
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A global owner and operator of life sciences space has expanded its presence in San Diego’s coveted life sciences hub with a new nine-figure acquisition.
Breakthrough Properties, a joint venture between Tishman Speyer and bellco capital, announced it has acquired Muse, a 186,000-square-foot trophy life sciences campus in San Diego’s Torrey Pines neighborhood, for $159 million from seller Diversified Healthcare Trust.
“Muse presented a rare opportunity to expand our portfolio with a value-add campus in one of the world’s foremost life science clusters,” Dan D’Orazi, executive vice president and chief investment officer for Breakthrough, said in a statement.
The trust acquired the three-building campus at 3030, 3040 and 3050 Science Park Road in 2009 for about $115.6 million, property records show, and then spent $100 million renovating it via its property manager RMR Group. The redeveloped campus reopened in 2021.
The campus was 49 percent leased at the time of the most recent sale, with a weighted average lease term of eight years, exemplifying the troubles the life sciences landlords have faced recently in securing tenants due largely to the sheer amount of delivered space over the past several years. Vacancy reached 23.1 percent and availability rates hit 27.2 percent in the San Diego submarket this past quarter, both reached record highs, according to year-end data by JLL.
Diversified Healthcare Trust will use the proceeds of the Muse sale to pay down debt tied to the property, which comes due in early 2026, according to a statement. The outstanding balance of the debt was not immediately disclosed.
Muse, meanwhile, is a few miles southwest of Breakthrough’s newly opened, 520,000-square-foot life sciences campus that it dubbed Torrey Heights by Breakthrough. Despite vacancy challenges across San Diego, Breakthrough said that it had pre-leased the entire campus before its opening in late September.
Tenants include Pfizer, which last February inked a 230,133-square-foot lease at the Torrey Heights campus in what ultimately became the region’s largest lease of the year by far.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
