Richmond Residents Welcome Berkeley Lab

An enthusiastic Richmond audience, which included Richmond’s mayor, chief of police, fire chief, Chamber of Commerce president and 300 to 400 others, greeted Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory officials Thursday at City Hall as they described their hopes for a second campus.

Berkeley Lab is  for where it might build a second campus of laboratory space. Richmond Albany, Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville are on the shortlist, .

The lab wants to consolidate operations scattered around the Bay Area into what will be its second campus, ideally within 25 minutes of its first campus in the Berkeley Hills. About 800 employees would initially work at the second campus.

In Albany, the lab is considering the waterfront location that includes the  racetrack. In Richmond, it is considering the waterfront land that houses the Richmond Field Station of the University of California. The two sites have many similarities.

Amid banners welcoming Berkeley Lab, frequent cheers and applause, and numerous speeches imploring the lab to come to Richmond, lab officials got the message that Richmond is eager to be selected as the second campus.

, some a meeting that was similarly positive and excited. 

Asked if an enthusiastic welcome might make a difference as lab officials weigh the pros and cons of each site, Paul Alivisatos, lab director, said “It does make a difference."

"There are a lot of criteria for us to sift through, but this is something that means a great deal. It is stunning,” he said.

Officials and the developer representing Richmond touted the vast amount of space available at the Richmond Field Station (125 acres), its easy commute options and Richmond’s embrace of green businesses and practices.

Another boon for Richmond is that the station is already owned by the University of California, a Berkeley Lab partner. But the station is a national laboratory, funded by the Department of Energy, so university finances may or may not come into play.

A good deal of the science going on at Berkeley Lab can be characterized as clean, or green, technology, and one of the major labs it hopes to move to the new campus, the Joint BioEnergy Institute, is about creating clean, plentiful, fuel. 

Any city hoping to include the new campus would seem to need “green” credentials, which all of the East Bay communities under consideration seem to have in check.

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