Image courtesy of CUBE 3 and Jacobs

It might seem like the mantra among most Boston commercial real estate developers these days is “Build it as labs or nothing at all.”

Life science and biomanufacturing projects are in various stages of development from Worcester to the Seaport and an expanding range of outer suburbs.

But how many of these proposed new life science clusters outside the traditional Kendall Square and Cambridge ecosystem have sea legs? One might surprise you.

Medford, less than 4 miles north of downtown Boston and connected via the MBTA’s Orange Line (and soon the Green Line Extension), might not jump to mind as the next life science hub. But several large-scale proposals say otherwise.

With projects ranging from air rights development potential over the MBTA’s Wellington station to lab conversions, the city is emerging as a sleeper life science cluster a few MBTA stops beyond the current crop of major projects at Cambridge Crossing and Somerville’s Assembly Row.

“Life sciences firms want to expand past Cambridge and Boston, so we’re excited and willing and able to do what we can to find locations and work with landowners and developers and make it happen,” Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn said.

Potential Transformation on Mystic Avenue

The developments vary in size and scope. At the transformative end, there is Combined Properties’ 1.2 million-square-foot Medford Life Science Park proposal that includes four 8-story office-lab buildings at 278-326 Mystic Ave. Medford leaders are also offering up 28 acres of air rights development over the Wellington station.

While it’s expected developers are likely to flock first to the 10 acres of surface property that doesn’t require building over an active train line, don’t rule out the more ambitious part of the air rights offering. Air rights projects over South Station and at a variety of parcels over the Massachusetts Turnpike through Boston are now moving ahead after decades of delay.

“We are at a unique point in time where it’s not only a land-use best practice and a community best practice, but also there’s a business case now for the state and the MBTA to pursue these projects,” said Viktor Schrader, Medford’s economic development director.

Elsewhere in the city, Cummings Properties already offers speculative floor plans ranging from 2,000 and 25,000 square feet for build-to-suit labs at 200 Boston Ave., between Tufts University and the Mystic Valley Parkway. The developer has also proposed converting a parking deck on the property into a 3-story building that can support office research, development and advanced manufacturing.

‘Closer to Kendall than Watertown’

“Location, location, location and an enlightened and cooperative city government,” Cummings Properties CEO Dennis Clarke said in response to what drew the Woburn-based developer to Medford for additional life science development opportunities. “There’s long been a spillover effect from Cambridge and Longwood in Boston, where firms – especially smaller startup firms – are looking for space and more cost-effective space than what’s in the big city.”

Kendall Square’s appeal to life science firms looking to plant a flag in the area stemmed from the neighborhood’s proximity to Harvard and MIT. But don’t discount Medford, home to many who work at those prestigious schools as well as Tufts University.

“As far as the crow flies, certain parts of Medford are closer to Kendall Square than [other life science] hot spots like Watertown or even the far edges of the Seaport,” said Jeffrey Myers, a research director at Colliers. “If you think about the access to talent, Medford is a quick easy commute from communities in Cambridge, Somerville and Boston.”

Additionally, city leaders pitch their jurisdiction as one where companies can be closer to where life science workers actually live. Sure, downtown Boston and Cambridge are desirable places to call home, but they are also extraordinarily expensive and competitive for housing. Medford and Malden at the northern end of the Orange Line offer comparatively more affordable housing.

Medford’s median sales price was $850,000 for single-family homes and $603,500 for condominiums, according to data compiled by The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. Malden’s were $613,000 and $355, respectively. Those stack up favorably compared to the median condo prices in Somerville ($720,000) and Cambridge ($890,000), let alone those two cities’ million-dollar-plus median single-family sales prices.

“Greater Cambridge and Boston are staffed by employees that live in Medford, so as [the companies] are getting priced out or as they’re needing to grow, they’re looking for a new location that’s close to where employees live,” Schrader said. “Medford’s right there. It’s been passed over for years and decades.”

Somerville’s Davis Square. Some observers compare Medford’s potential to that of Somerville’s: historically
residential, but possessed of good transit connections to existing life science hubs.

Commercial Districts Underdeveloped for Decades

But Medford also can offer a lot more space for companies needing to scale up. Even with the threat of a recession on the horizon, Greater Boston’s life science vacancy rate was 3 percent at the end of the second quarter, according to Colliers.

“We have industrial areas around Wellington, Mystic Ave. and around Tufts University that had been underdeveloped for a long time, and developers are leading the charge,” Schrader said. “Companies are interested that it aligns really well with their requirements.”

If people are still scratching their heads at why Medford could emerge as a life science cluster, look a little further to the south in Somerville. Areas like Union Square and Assembly Row were propelled forward in recent years as viable places to park life science development, but Somerville – like Medford – was historically a residential area.

“Somerville has similar kind of characteristics: heavier on the residential but has good transit access and proximity to Cambridge and Kendall Square and Boston and the airport and all of those things that you would expect in an inner-suburban location,” said Elizabeth Berthelette, director of research at Newmark. “Medford intuitively makes sense as part of that new northern, inner-suburban cluster.”

Is there enough room to go around? Most likely. While the biggest pharmaceutical companies typically stick to real estate deals in areas like Cambridge Crossing, Kendall Square and the Seaport, Berthelette said a submarket like Medford is best-positioned to capitalize on smaller and medium-sized life science companies looking to grow.

“I won’t call it a silver bullet, but I do think that some companies will find it a viable location for expansion and growth opportunities,” Myers said.