Seeking to realize a vision for a life sciences campus, Alexandria Real Estate Equities has purchased a San Diego retail center for $125M.

The seller, Regency Centers, had been planning a joint venture with Alexandria to transform the Costa Verde Center into a mixed-use campus including 200K SF of retail and restaurants, a 200-room hotel, and 400K SF of labs and offices, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, which first reported the deal.

The property is situated along a new trolley line across the street from the shopping mall Westfield UTC.

“This is absolutely one of the best sites on the West Coast,” Alexandria co-Chief Investment Officer Dan Ryan told the Union-Tribune. “It’ll go from being an old, dilapidated retail center to a vibrant, exciting community center and we’re really enthusiastic for the potential of the site.”

The property is near the University Towne Center submarket, one of San Diego's major hubs for life sciences. Alexandria has a number of properties that it wants to link up with the new stock at the to-be-redeveloped Costa Verde Center to create a megacampus, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  The company is focusing future efforts on these types of campuses, the filings state, and it is planning another in Northern California where it purchased four offices totaling $446M in a deal announced last week.

Alexandria spent $1.5B in the last quarter of 2021 on life sciences acquisitions, according to documents filed with the SEC.