The U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with support from the University of California (UC), has issued a request for qualifications (RFQ) for a second campus to consolidate current programs that are located throughout the Bay Area.
The laboratory's existing campus is located in the Berkeley hills above the University of California, Berkeley. The RFQ seeks expressions of interest for a site with a combination of attributes, including that it be located within 25 minutes of the original campus, have land capacity to accommodate any future growth and have easy access to public transportation and other amenities.
‘Our lab has a significant need for a second campus to accommodate both current and future programs, as far as 30 to 50 years into the future,’ says Paul Alivisatos, director of the laboratory. ‘Berkeley Lab has been the home to some of the most innovative scientific research in the last 80 years. Now we need to ensure that it has the discovery space to meet today's needs and those that will certainly arise in the future.’
Most of the laboratory's 4,200 employees work at its main site, but approximately 20% of them are dispersed around the East Bay in four facilities: the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in Oakland and the Life Sciences division in West Berkeley.
The laboratory will seek to co-locate with synergistic commercial and industrial activity to help promote the development of clean and sustainable energy technologies.
Responses to the RFQ are due within 60 days of today's issuance. UC intends to announce a short list by the end of March and make a final site selection by June. After environmental assessments, site development, design and construction of the site, occupancy could occur by the end of 2015.
SOURCE: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
