Tonight, the highly-anticipated documentary The Inventor: Out For Blood in Silicon Valley about scammer Elizabeth Holmes and her now-defunct biotech company Theranos finally hits HBO. While we expect the 119-minute true crime saga to answer many questions about what really became of the Holmes, the Edison blood-testing system, and the company's $9 billion, there is one feature of the Theranos story the doc might not spend too much time on and that's what happened to the beautifully-designed building that served as Theranos' headquarters until 2017.
The Theranos Palo Alto headquarters were located at 1701 Page Mill Road in a building that is part of the Stanford Research Park. The building was designed by Studios Architecture for Stanford Real Estate. Completed in September 2014 — three months after Fortune announced that Theranos had raised $400 million in equity sales and was valued at over $9 billion — 1701 Page Mill Road is a total of 116,000 square feet and is made up of two stories and a below-ground parking garage. One wildly coincidental detail about the property where Stanford Real Estate chose to build is that it, according to the San Francisco Business Times, was the former site of a Wall Street Journal printing press facility, which is the publication that exposed Theranos in 2015.
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According to Studio's profile of the building, the landscaping and sidewalks play an integral role in the overall architectural concept. It was designed, too, to be energy efficient, with an orientation towards the north and south to maximize day-lighting and use of recycled materials. During the time when Theranos occupied the building, it was 25 percent lab space.
In 2016, 1701 Page Mill Road earned a Gold Nugget Grand Award for Best Commercial Project over 20,000 square feet in the Pacific Coast Builders Conference. The Gold Nugget judges remarked of the building, "The project has exceptional visual appeal. In a community of many fine examples for the research and development genre, this building offers the best of itself from every direction. A great combination of materials and design cues that direct the visitor to the heart of the project. Perfect for the biotech and R&D clients intended, all the elements come together and make this prominent location a neighbor worth emulating."
The Page Mill Road property was purchased from Stanford Real Estate by a real estate investment trust company called Kilroy Realty Corporation in January 2017. Kilroy Realty acquired it along with an adjacent building in the Stanford Research Park for a total of $130,000,000. Shortly after the sale, Mike Sanford, Kilroy's executive vice president of Northern California, told the San Francisco Business Times, the acquisition cost about $850 per square foot, which he thought was a good deal seeing as other sales in the area were going for over $1,000 per square foot at the time.
With the sale, Kilroy became Theranos' landlord, but just six months later, in July 2017, with Holmes' company nearing bankruptcy, Theranos confirmed to Vanity Fair that it was considering subleasing some or all of the office space in 1701 Page Mill Road. The rental price was listed as "negotiable." We reached out to CBRE, the commercial real estate group Theranos retained in 2017 to help with subleasing the property, and Kilroy Realty Corp. for information about what occupies the Page Mill Road building now, but have yet to hear back.
Despite not knowing exactly who now uses the award-winning 116,000-square-foot space, we do know that whoever it is is paying around $1,730,000 a month in rent, according to an estimate from the commercial real estate website Keyvon. And, despite being dragged into the Theranos drama, the building's value is still high at an estimated $26,035,00.