[Petra Pasternak]
Ned Israelsen gets a kick out of going to the office these days.
His firm, Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear, recently traded its digs in a downtown San Diego high rise – where it had been for 26 years – for a campus setting left vacant by a shrinking biopharma company.
It’s open and airy, with flowing water, said the managing partner of the office. And it’s closer to clients.
Israelsen said the new space, a corporate building and lab at 12790 El Camino Real, was constructed four years ago by Neurocrine Biosciences. The company had downsized and now occupies only the lab area, he said. Knobbe’s 50-some lawyers moved Monday. Its 65,000 square feet feature a 104-seat auditorium and a rotunda-like meeting room with a 12-foot rear projection screen bordered in back by a glass wall with a running water fall and pond. Staffers take their lunch there, he said.
“It has a much more comfortable feel than our steel-and-glass high rise did,” Israelsen said. “I think it’s more conducive to collegiality and creativity.”
The new office is also in a biotech and high-tech business cluster, with firm clients like Qualcomm and Traversa Therapeutics nearby. Asked if Neurocrine was a client, too, Israelsen laughed, and said: “Not yet.”
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