OCEANSIDEOCEANSIDE — Gilead Sciences Inc. plans to build a new manufacturing center on 14 acres alongside its existing facility in the Ocean Ranch Corporate Center, according to a preliminary application submitted to the Oceanside Planning Division.
A worldwide biopharmaceutical company with headquarters in Foster City, Gilead makes antiviral drugs used to treat cancer, HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, influenza and COVID-19. Founded in 1987, the company bought a 70,000-square-foot clinical manufacturing plant in Oceanside from Genentech Pharmaceuticals in 2011.
Last year, Gilead bought an additional 27 acres of undeveloped land on Ocean Ranch Boulevard for a reported $132.5 million, or $4.9 million per acre. The expansion proposed for about half of that site is intended to additional manufacturing and development for Gilead and its Kite Pharma subsidiary.
“Our Oceanside location focuses on ing clinical manufacturing and process development for Gilead and Kite,” said Joydeep Ganguly, senior vice president of corporate operations, in a statement the company issued last year.
“We value the talent and infrastructure available in Southern California and purchased the land to give us the ability to bring more manufacturing operations to the area,” he said.
Gilead officials did not respond to requests Friday for more information about the expansion.
The site is the same one where online shopping giant Amazon formerly planned to open a 142,000-square-foot distribution center with about 500 employees. The Oceanside City Council unanimously denied permits for the Amazon project in August 2021 after neighbors raised concerns about traffic, noise, parking and other details of the project.
Permits for Gilead’s proposed expansion will be reviewed at a public hearing before the Oceanside Planning Commission. No date has been announced.
The Gilead expansion will take place in two phases, according to a June 10 letter to the city from Chase Ronge, a project director and consultant for the company.
First will be the construction of the manufacturing facilities, a warehouse, a utility plant, the primary offices and a parking lot with overhead photovoltaic cells. The second phase will include more offices and site improvements.
“The manufacturing space will contain two fully segregated process suites and will assist the development and production of Gilead’s portfolio of recombinant protein products,” Ronge said in the letter.
Companies in Oceanside and Carlsbad have helped make San Diego County the third-largest concentration of biotech-related businesses in the nation, behind the San Francisco Bay and Boston areas.
Ionis Pharmaceuticals, which has its main campus in Carlsbad, plans to open a research-and-development center in Oceanside’s El Corazon Park, at Oceanside Boulevard and Rancho Del Oro Road, in 2025 and employ 200 permanent, full-time people there.
The company makes medicines used to treat a wasting disease called spinal muscular atrophy, Huntington’s disease and various cardiovascular and neurological conditions.
Other biotech-related companies in Carlsbad include Thermo Fisher Scientific, Quidel, Copan Diagnostics, Millipore Sigma and Genmark Diagnostics.
