Vulcan Real Estate Vulcan's Real Estate division offers development and portfolio management services from site selection and urban planning to build-to-suit construction. Vulcan has developed 6.6 million square feet of new residential, office, retail and
biotechnology research space and has a total development capacity of 10,000,000 square feet (930,000 m2). Vulcan Real Estate redeveloped the
South Lake Union neighborhood north of downtown Seattle and along the south shore of
Lake Union. More than $5.7 billion has been invested in the neighborhood since 2002 for development projects and public infrastructure improvements. Vulcan advocated for the Seattle Streetcar line known as
South Lake Union Streetcar, which runs from Seattle's
Westlake Center to the south end of Lake Union. The streetcar started operation on December 12, 2007. This development has been criticized as a city-supported real estate investment for Vulcan Inc., "It's exceeded my expectations," Allen said of the South Lake Union development. The company also developed a five-building complex for
Google near
Lake Union Park. In late February 2022, Vulcan Real Estate sold the two-block, four-building Google campus overlooking Seattle's Lake Union for $802 million, a price of $1,260 per square foot that was believed to set a record for local office space. In September 2014, Vulcan promised to invest $200 million in
Yesler Terrace, southeast of downtown Seattle, buying three land parcels from the
Seattle Housing Authority as part of an ambitious plan to redevelop the 30-acre low-income housing site.
The Hospital Club In 2002, Paul Allen reopened the doors of the old St. Paul's Hospital in London's
Covent Garden neighborhood, revealing a new 60,000-square-foot creative hub, providing a professional and social hub to those working in the film, television, music, advertising, contemporary art and design, publishing and journalism, interactive media, theatre and fashion industries.
Museums • The
Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum displays Paul G. Allen's collection of military aircraft, tanks, and other military hardware from the United States, Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The collection opened to the public in 2004 at the
Arlington, Washington, airfield, then moved in 2008 to a hangar at Paine Field in
Everett, Washington. Several weeks after Allen's death in 2018, the museum opened a larger hangar to preserve related stories. • The
Living Computers: Museum + Labs (LCM+L) is a computer and technology museum in the
SoDo neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. LCM+L (originally known as Living Computer Museum, and before that, PDPplanet.com) was founded by Allen on January 9, 2006. • The
Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP (previously called EMP Museum), Is a nonprofit museum dedicated to contemporary popular culture. It was founded by Paul Allen in 2000 as the Experience Music Project. MoPOP has organized dozens of exhibits, at least 17 of which have toured across the US and internationally. • The
Seattle Art Fair displays modern and contemporary art and is a showcase for the arts community of the Pacific Northwest. • The SIFF Cinema Downtown, previously named the
Seattle Cinerama, is a
downtown Seattle theater with a large screen. It was remodeled in 2014 to allow for more projection methods, and remodeled again, reopening in December 2023. • The
Upstream Music Fest + Summit is a three-day music festival.
Vulcan Sports and Entertainment Established in 2007, Vulcan Sports and Entertainment (VSE) provides strategic oversight for Allen's professional sports franchises including the
Portland Trail Blazers, the
Seattle Seahawks and manages
Lumen Field,
WaMu Theater, the
Moda Center and
Veterans Memorial Coliseum (Portland, Oregon). In the fall of 2018, Chris McGowan was named
CEO of Vulcan Sports and Entertainment after
Peter McLoughlin left the Seahawks.
Research Both the
Allen Institute for Brain Science and the
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence were incubated at Vulcan Inc. Started at Vulcan Inc. in 2001, the
Allen Brain Atlas project sought to understand the connections between genes and brain functioning. From the project's research, Paul Allen created the Allen Institute for Brain Science in 2003 with a $100 million donation. Project Halo came next. The project ran from 2002 to 2013, with the goal of creating a "digital
Aristotle" that can correctly answer queries about scientific information, using
artificial intelligence. The project led to a number of spinoff technologies, including the
wiki software bundle SMW+, the Semantic Inferencing on Large Knowledge (SILK) project and the Automated User-Centered Reasoning and Acquisition System (AURA). From Project Halo's results, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence was created.
Vulcan Productions Vulcan Productions produces films, digital programs and outreach initiatives. Its programs have won awards including the
George Foster Peabody Award, the
Emmy Award, and the
Grammy Award. Vulcan Productions closed in 2021.
Technology Vulcan Inc. has also directly led some technology projects. In 2003, Vulcan began developing the
Vulcan FlipStart, a
subnotebook with a 5.6-inch screen. The company began to manufacture and sell the FlipStart in March 2007, and ceased production in May 2008. Vulcan Spectrum, a branch of Vulcan Inc., participated in the
United States 2008 wireless spectrum auction, and paid for "A Block" spectrum in the
Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton area, and for "A Block" spectrum in
Portland-
Salem.
Vulcan Aerospace is a subsidiary of Vulcan Inc. set up in 2015 to help achieve Paul Allen's desire to make commercial space travel more convenient and less expensive. Vulcan Aerospace oversaw the development of
Stratolaunch Systems project, an
air launch system being developed 2010–2019 to transport payloads to low Earth orbit using a large
carrier aircraft. In 2016, initial test flights were projected to take place as early as 2016. In September 2016, Vulcan Aerospace President
Chuck Beames left his role leading the effort and was replaced by an interim executive director: "
Jean Floyd, the CEO of Vulcan’s Stratolaunch Systems." Although the super-sized Stratolaunch carrier aircraft first flew on April 13, 2019, at the
Mojave Air and Space Port in a 2 h 29 min flight, Vulcan announced in May 2019 that the company would cease operations. The assets of Stratolaunch, including all
intellectual property and the -wingspan
carrier aircraft—"the world’s largest aircraft to fly"—were put up for sale for in June 2019. Stratolaunch was sold and the new owner was identified in December 2019 to be
Cerberus Capital Management. Stratolaunch continued to operate under new ownership.
Philanthropy In 2014, Vulcan Inc. partnered with Elephants Without Borders to secure a $7.3 million grant to conduct the
Great Elephant Census. The census was designed to provide accurate and up-to-date data about the number and distribution of African elephants by using standardized aerial surveys of thousands of square miles. Prior to the survey, many countries had not conducted surveying flights in as many as 10 years. Dozens of researchers flying in small planes captured comprehensive observational data of elephants and elephant carcasses. The census was completed in 2016, finding that elephant populations had declined by as much as 30 percent over the previous seven years as a result of poaching. In February 2016, Allen announced that Vulcan would donate $2 million in grants to stop the spread of the
Zika virus. Most of the funds went to mosquito control efforts in countries where the virus was quickly spreading, while the remainder was used to fund a diagnostic test. ==References==