SAN DIEGO AND BOSTON — Life sciences real estate development firm IQHQ Inc. has completed a $1.7 billion equity raise. The company — which completed an initial equity raise of $770 million earlier this year — plans to use the combined funds to build 4.4 million square feet of projects that are currently in its development pipeline. The company has offices in San Diego and Boston, both hubs for life sciences companies.
The demand for life sciences real estate continues to increase as the need for vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics intensifies amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an October report by CBRE. Plymouth Meeting, Pa.-based CenterSquare Investment Management invested $158 million in IQHQ’s latest funding round, alongside a group of undisclosed new and existing strategic partners.
Madison International Realty, a real estate private equity firm, invested $100 million with an option to invest an incremental $100 million in IQHQ.
IQHQ’s current projects include sites in Boston, San Francisco and San Diego. The company announced plans to develop the San Diego Research and Development District (RaDD), a $1.5 billion life science campus located along San Diego’s waterfront, in September.
The RaDD will span eight acres and three city blocks, making it the largest urban commercial waterfront site on the California coast, according to the development team. Preliminary plans call for lab, office and retail space.
The company also acquired Innovation Park, an approximately 200,000-square-foot life sciences and office development located in the northern Boston suburb of Andover, and 109 Brookline Avenue, a 285,000-square-foot office and lab building in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, earlier this year.
IQHQ acquires, develops and operates life sciences properties in innovation hubs including San Francisco, San Diego, Boston and the Golden Triangle in the United Kingdom.
— Katie Sloan