The City of Millbrae and Longfellow Celebrates Groundbreaking of Avia Labs
Upcoming State-of-the-Art, All-Electric Life Science Center

The City of Millbrae and Longfellow Real Estate Partners, one of the largest privately held investors and developers of life science buildings in the United States, today celebrated the groundbreaking of Avia Labs at Millbrae Station. The new 315,000-square-foot Class A lab and office project will replace a former vacant storage facility with the first all-electric life science campus in California.

The Millbrae location places the lab centrally within the San Francisco Peninsula. The new campus will offer unparalleled access to transit, with its proximity to the San Francisco International Airport and steps away from our Millbrae Transit Center, the largest intermodal transit hub west of the Mississippi River.

“Millbrae’s transit-oriented location and proximity to world-class institutions make it the ideal site for a new purpose-built life science hub,” said Lauren McDermott, Longfellow Managing Director, San Francisco. “We look forward to following through on our vision for this site as a state-of-the-art facility, built with ESG at the forefront and designed to meet the demands of academic research institutions and biotech companies large and small.”

The groundbreaking today signifies the partnership that has been built between Longfellow and the City of Millbrae. Longfellow is putting sustainable building front and center with Avia Labs. With LEED Gold and Fitwel Certifications, this ground-up design emphasizes energy efficiency and quality of life for future tenants and partners who will benefit from natural light reaching all sides of the buildings, and access to a suite of campus amenities: including a fitness center, large conference spaces, bike storage, a terrace overlooking the city with beautiful mountain views and a publicly accessible café to welcome members of the Millbrae community.

“Land development projects such as this require several things vision, knowledge, partnerships, trust, and belief.  That is what this project has,” said City Manager Thomas C. Williams. “A beautiful landmark building that will greatly improve the Cityscape of Millbrae, create hundreds of locals jobs and add to a robust local economy.”

The groundbreaking on Avia Labs marks a milestone not only for Longfellow but for the City of Millbrae as well. This project, and the adjacent Alexandria campus, will help put Millbrae on the Life Science and Biotech map. The projected completion date for this project is early 2025.