If you’ve ever hopped on the tube in London or swiped your MTA card to take the L from Brooklyn into Manhattan, you have San Diego innovation to thank for it. Cubic’s Transportation division is helping move millions of people throughout the world’s most dynamic cities, including Sydney, London, New York, and more. Though Cubic is a global company, it is headquartered right here, in San Diego.
This week, the company reaffirmed its commitment to San Diego by breaking ground on a new campus. The two 125,000 square-foot, three-story buildings, developed in partnership with Cisterra Development, will bring its San Diego-based workforce together onto one centralized location in Kearny Mesa.
A long history in San Diego
In 1951, Walter J. Zable opened a small electronics company operating out of a modest storefront. Today, Cubic has 6,000 employees globally and three primary business units that do everything from increase mass transit efficiencies to train and protect our armed forces. Along the way, the company has developed a lot of “firsts”; from the world’s first electronic scoreboard for a stadium to the first wholly contactless fare system in the U.S., meaning you can swipe a card (and in some cities, a smartphone) instead of scrounging for change to buy a bus ticket.
Since the beginning, San Diego has been a crucial part of Cubic’s story. As the company began to win new contracts and bring innovations to market, it added new employees to keep up with the demands. However, these employees were spread throughout a few buildings in San Diego.
One Cubic headquarters
Cubic’s new home base seeks to change that.
“Our culture is driven by One Cubic, which emphasizes collaboration across our businesses to share ideas, strategies, and expertise. We are thrilled our new campus will bring together our San Diego employees onto one centralized location where we can continue to achieve excellence through teamwork,” said Bradley H. Feldmann, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Cubic Corporation. If you’re looking for jobs in San Diego, you might want to visit Cubic’s career site.
This isn’t Cisterra Development’s first time working on a project of this magnitude. In San Diego and beyond, the developer has made a name for itself for creating cutting-edge space for San Diego strongholds including Sempra Energy (and it’s downtown headquarters) as well as Diamond View Tower, which houses numerous San Diego startups.
The new campus will also contain new landscaped common areas for employees, including a basketball court and open lawn, as well as a new café and fitness center.
With assistance from EDC, Cubic secured a CalCompetes Tax Credit worth $8.5 million. Locally, Cubic was also able to secure expedited processes through the City of San Diego, in addition to a Business Incentive Program and Business Cooperation Program award. In total, the incentives and expedited processes provided gave Cubic the necessary offsets and timeline confidence to commit to redeveloping its Kearny Mesa headquarters, and keeping San Diego as its home for decades to follow.
And not to be overlooked, Cubic’s new campus will also provide access to one of San Diego’s overlooked neighborhoods – Kearny Mesa. As Councilmember Chris Cate, who represents the city of San Diego’s 6th district, said, “Kearny Mesa is going to be the hottest neighborhood in San Diego.”
And we can thank Cubic for being (one of) the impetuses of this. The new campus is expected to be online by December 2020.