BOSTON — Newmark has brokered the sale of One Alewife Center, a 90,000-square-foot life sciences facility located adjacent to the MBTA Alewife station on the city’s north side. The facility is situated within the 290,000-square-foot Alewife Park office and life sciences campus. Robert Griffin, Edward Maher, Matthew Pullen and Samantha Hallowell of Newmark represented the seller, James Campbell Co., in the transaction. The team also procured life sciences REIT IQHQ as the buyer. IQHQ also purchased the larger Alewife Park campus in July.
Life Sciences
CONROE, TEXAS — VGXI Inc., a biotechnology firm that supports the gene therapy and DNA vaccine industries, will open a new life sciences and headquarters facility in Conroe, about 40 miles north of Houston. Local media outlets, including Community Impact Newspaper and the Houston Business Journal, report that the facility will span 240,000 square feet. The company’s new space will be located within Deison Technology Park and will allow VGXI to quintuple its current production capacity. BE&K Building Group is handling the design and build of the project. Construction is underway, and the facility is expected to be operational by the first quarter of 2022.
WALTHAM, MASS. — Translate Bio, an RNA therapeutics company, has signed a 10-year, 138,000-square-foot life sciences lease at 200 West St. in the western Boston suburb of Waltham. Boston Properties (NYSE: BXP) is currently redeveloping the site into a lab property that is slated for completion in 2021 and that is now 100 percent preleased. Building amenities will include a full-service café, fitness center and conferencing facilities. According to the Boston Business Journal, Translate Bio is working with the vaccine unit of pharmaceutical giant Sanofi to use messenger RNA to synthesize antibodies that can fight COVID-19.
BOSTON — Locally based biotechnology firm Ginkgo Bioworks has signed a 38,759-square-foot life sciences lease at 10 Wilson Road in the Cambridge area of Boston. The new space is located within The Quad, a four-building, 510,000-square-foot campus that is being developed in phases by The Davis Companies. McKenna Teague and Erick Smith of CBRE represented the developer in the lease negotiations. Anne Columbia and Patrick Downey of Columbia Group Realty Advisors Inc. represented the tenant.
BOSTON — Locally based developer King Street Properties has broken ground on 101 Cambridgepark, a $170 million life sciences project located in the Cambridge area of Boston. King Street is partnering with California-based Healthpeak Properties on the 160,000-square-foot project, which will feature both traditional office and laboratory space within a five-story building. The property will also include 3,000 square feet of street-level retail space with outdoor seating. Completion is slated for the third quarter of 2022. Newmark is leasing the project.
WALTHAM, MASS. — General contractor Gilbane Building Co. has topped out 225 Wyman Street, a 500,000-square-foot life sciences project in the western Boston suburb of Waltham. Designed by Gensler, the property will offer space for both laboratory/research and development users as well as traditional office users. Amenities will include green space with walking trails, a three-acre courtyard, fitness center, conference center, dining facility and a 1,500-space covered parking garage with electric vehicle charging stations. Hobbs Brook Management LLC is the developer of the project, which is expected to be complete in March 2022.
By Brendan Carroll, research director, Cushman & Wakefield Through the first three quarters of 2020, the Boston life sciences market is seeing record occupancy, a continuation of large new-building leases, stable rents at record levels, high levels of pre-committed new construction and an insatiable appetite for inventory in new submarket clusters. Cushman & Wakefield defines laboratory properties as facilities optimized for the physical scientific research of biotechnology products. COVID-19’s Impact Following a pause of leasing activity in the first quarter of 2020, lease negotiations for laboratory facilities resumed quickly in the second quarter, hitting a level that commercial office properties have still yet to see. While optimism quickly returned for the region’s office-using businesses, widespread execution of remote office-using job functions has proven to be more effective for many of these workforces than market leaders previously envisioned. The consensus among real estate observers suggests a long-term decrease in the percent of in-office workers for traditional office-using functions. However, the importance of the continued use of physical spaces for biotechnology research will not be affected, as this function cannot be accommodated through current and easily envisioned remote work practices. These are highly specialized jobs performed by employees with highly targeted skill …
NEW YORK CITY — Taconic Partners and Nuveen Real Estate have unveiled plans to redevelop 125 West End Avenue into a life sciences and research building. Broadcaster ABC has occupied the property as part of its New York City headquarters since 1985 but plans to vacate in January 2021. Chrysler originally constructed the eight-story, 400,000-square-foot property in 1929 as an automotive facility. The New York Times is also a former owner and tenant. The building features floorplates of more than 50,000 square feet, ceiling heights ranging from 13 to 16 feet, multiple access points and views of the Hudson River. Taconic and Nuveen purchased the property in late 2019 for $230 million. Plans call for a mechanical plant, purpose-built lab infrastructure, a new façade, roof terrace and conference center. The developers are still evaluating options for the remainder of the site, which includes a six-story, 131,000-square-foot television studio building and a 1.2-acre development parcel. Construction is slated for completion in 2023. The project team includes architect Perkins+Will and engineer JB&B. The development will feature several environmental sustainability features and is on track to achieve LEED Gold certification. Estimated development costs were not disclosed, though LoanCore Capital did provide a $181 …
SAN FRANCISCO — Chicago-based REIT Ventas Inc. (NYSE: VTR), through its Life Sciences and Healthcare Real Estate Fund, has acquired an 800,000-square-foot life sciences campus in San Francisco for roughly $1 billion. The San Francisco Business Journal reports that the property is the Genesis South office and life sciences hub, which consists of two office and lab buildings totaling roughly 720,000 square feet, as well as a 72,000-square-foot building. The Class A campus is located on the city’s south side and consists of three newly built or renovated buildings. The campus was 96 percent leased at the time of sale with a weighted average lease term of more than six years. The property is purpose-built for advanced research functions and is predominantly features lab space supporting biotechnology and other life sciences research. Nearly half of the tenant roster consists of publicly traded companies with market capitalizations of $10 billion or higher that are backed by venture capital or private equity firms. The price represents a capitalization rate of approximately 5 percent. The seller was a partnership between Boston-based Bain Capital and San Diego-based Phase 3, according to IPE Real Assets, which provides global intelligence for institutional real estate investment. In …
LEXINGTON, MASS. — Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. has received approvals to move forward with the development of a 200,000-square-foot life sciences project at 91 Hartwell Ave. in the Boston metro of Lexington. Designed by Boston-based architecture firm DiMella Shaffer, the property will consist of 95,000 square feet of lab space, 125,000 square feet of office space and a 502-space parking structure. The development team also includes Paul Finger Associates, LEC Environmental and Nitsch Engineering.