Apparently, there’s a straight line between a college education and being a social climber that I missed along the way.
BioMarin’s move to sell off its Food and Drug Administration special voucher for $67.5 million once again demonstrates why the pharmaceutical company continues to grow.
The San Rafael-based company, which focuses on developing treatments for so-called orphan diseases (diseases with small population pools; the FDA provides orphan status for drugs or therapies to encourage companies to undertake research of such drugs and provides expedited review process to cut down development costs), sold the priority review voucher it received from the FDA in February to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Sanofi. The voucher entitles the owner to a faster review of a new drug, potentially knocking the process down to someplace between six months and one year. And it’s completely legit to deal the vouchers if a company doesn’t have a product at hand or can better use cash to fuel growth.
BioMarin also broke ground on a new, three-story building in its new headquarters at Second Street and Lincoln Avenue. The new facility will include an 85,000-square-foot office building and a 650-car parking structure in downtown San Rafael. The company paid $116.5 million for the complex earlier this year and occupies 40 percent of the total space. The company also has manufacturing facilities in Novato and is building a production facility in Ireland. It employs about 1,000 people in Marin and a total of 1,300. It has five approved drugs and a trio of drugs in the final stage of testing before they become eligible for possible FDA approval.
A mighty move
The San Rafael artisan tea company Mighty Leaf was acquired by Berkeley-based Peet’s Coffee & Tea for an undisclosed amount. The venture includes Next World Group, which holds a minority position in the venture.
Mighty Leaf, founded by the husband-and-wife team of Gary Shinner and Jill Portman in San Francisco, is known for its herbal teas and mesh pouches. The company will continue to operate independently, as Peet’s has pledged to keep its hands off the day-to-day. Mighty Leaf offers a wide variety of both pouch and loose teas as well as tea accessories.
While it’s too soon to know how the new ownership will impact Mighty Leaf, the corporate culture of Peet’s dedication to quality products and its access to a higher level of resources bodes well for the 60-employee company.
Your Marin moment
Moveto.com, a real estate website, recently embarked on the massive task of ranking the 300 snobbiest small towns (places with populations of 45,000 to 65,000) in the United States. You’ll be pleased to know that Marin was well represented, with San Rafael checking in at the fourth spot and Novato holding down the 29th position.
If you haven’t heard of Moveto, don’t feel bad, you’re not alone. Still, when talking real estate and Marin, one must pay attention. The site based its rankings on a complex formula that includes median home price, household income, percentage of population that are college grads, private school rankings, performing art rankings, art galleries and number of fast food places in town.
Nothing says “snob” like a Phi Beta Kappa who picks his kid up at the academy, visits a couple galleries along the way back to his plush estate and skips getting a bucket of KFC in favor of having his personal chef whip up a little farm-to-fork. At least that’s how we roll in The Mission City.
You can quibble with how the numbers were crunched and what Moveto included. Apparently, there’s a straight line between a college education and being a social climber that I missed along the way. It’s well known that elitists never dine on food that’s in any way quick, thus the crazed popularity of the slow food movement. And it was nice of Moveto to squeeze San Rafael in, even though it’s the only one of the top 50 snob towns to have more than 65,000 people, (67,713 according to the website).
I’m not saying that Marin doesn’t have folks who are name droppers with their beaks so far in the air they get frequent nose bleeds. But ask some residents if there might be towns better suited for the list and I think you might get some different choices: Hello Mill Valley, Belvedere and Ross.
