Features

Major changes now being planned at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) include a major move off-campus and a step toward demolition of one of the facility’s major structure. 

The off-campus move sends several LBNL programs into 72,000 square feet of newly leased space near Aquatic Park. 

The other move came in the form of a notice of preparation for an environmental impact report (EIR) required before the lab can demolish Building 54, the home of the facility’s long-retired Bevatron, the particle accelerator credited with four Nobel Prizes for work done on the machine. 

The long-term lease, signed earlier this month, on the second floor of a former warehouse building at 717 Potter St. in Wareham Development’s Aquatic Park Center, means another hunk of Berkeley real estate has moved off the tax rolls. Under state law, private property rented to a government or non-profit agency is removed from the tax rolls for the duration of the lease. 

Other tenants of Wareham’s 15-acre center include Bayer HealthCare, Dynavax Technologies, Xoma Ltd. and the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC). As with the lab, the DTSC pays no property taxes. 

Among the LBNL tenants occupying the newly acquired space will be experts in cancer research, advanced microscopy and computational modeling. The new quarters will also house the Synthetic Biology Department, a joint venture of LBNL and UC Berkeley under the director of Professor Kay Keasling. 

Wareham is a major East Bay property owner whose other Berkeley holdings include a 106,000-square-foot building now under construction at 700 Heinz Ave., the landmark Durkee Building at 800 Heinz Ave., and the Constitution Square Building on Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley. 

In Richmond the firm owns the state Department of Justice DNA lab, the building that houses the UC Technology Transfer Center and headquarters for Region IX of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Point Richmond Tech Center. 

Emeryville holdings include the Churn building, the 20-acre EmeryStation complex, the Amtrak Intermodal Station, Heritage Square, the Emeryville Research and Development Center, the Hollis Street Center and the Federal Express building. 

UC Berkeley published notice of the EIR Tuesday, including the announcement of a public scoping meeting to address concerns raised by the demolition to be held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. March 31 in the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

According to the notice, the lab doesn’t need the building or the massive particle accelerator, which was used between 1954 and 1993. 

Because four Nobel Prizes in physics stemmed directly from work conducted on the 180-feet-in-diameter Bevatron, the structure is eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. 

Soil and groundwater contamination has been detected under the building, including toxic volatile organic compounds, PCBs and mercury. 

If approved, demolition would begin in one or two years and be completed by 2010-12. 

While some building materials could be recycled, portions of the Bevatron and its shielding as well as the adjacent concrete are radioactive at low levels and would have to be taken to Department of Energy approved disposal facilities. 

Officials from Wareham and LBNL did not return calls for this article. The information was taken from the Wareham web site and the LBNL EIR notice.