Bio-Degrade
Vir Biotechnology is laying off 141 employees, approximately a quarter of its workforce at the company’s 1800 Owens Street facility. The dismissals, first reported by Fierce Biotech, will be executed at the end of this month and continue through October, encompassing upper management, scientists, engineers and researchers…FibroGen is cutting roughly 75 percent of its American workforce following the failure of two pancreatic cancer drug clinical trials. The business will implement “an immediate and significant cost reduction plan in the U.S.,” according to regulatory filings. The action will affect 127 employees at 409 Illinois Street, with layoffs taking place between October and December. Last year, FibroGen had about 400 global employees, after 104 U.S. layoffs during the summer.
School
A new private school will open in Airbnb’s former Showplace Square headquarters. In July Westwood US Inc., an American subsidiary of the English educational institution Wellington College, acquired the 63,000-square-foot 99 Rhode Island Street building for $23.5 million. The purchase, first reported by San Francisco Business Times, followed a foreclosure by Idaho-based lender A10 Capital on the previous owner, EQT Exeter, which defaulted on a $33 million loan. Hiba Academy will offer kindergarten through eighth grade bilingual education in English and Chinese. The school will be part of a global educational network with more than 10,000 students in the United Kingdom, China, Thailand and India. The three-story Rhode Island edifice previously hosted Macromedia and Jawbone. EQT Exeter bought the property in 2021 for $37 million, intending to revamp it, but the building remained vacant due to a declining office market, leading to foreclosure in December 2023.
Donuts
The Silver Crest Donut Shop, whose red neon sign boasted “We never close,” has fried its last sandwich. According to a Facebook post, the Bayshore Boulevard diner was boarded up over the summer, the phone line disconnected. The cash-only Silver Crest featured blue-green, fluorescent lights, long-silent jukeboxes in 1950-style booths, and broken-down pinball machines. Nominally an all-night breakfast spot, the restaurant’s menu included a fried ham sandwich for $11.95, Sanka for $2.95 and a hot snail pastry for $2.95. It will be missed…?