Image courtesy of Elkus Manfredi Architects

A site once proposed for lab space was acquired by a Boston-based marketing agency as Alexandria Real Estate Equities scales back its appetite for development.

Alexandria and Boston-based Anchor Line Partners proposed a 171,584-square-foot lab project on the 99 A St. site in 2019. The buyer is Verndale, a marketing agency with headquarters at 266 Summer St. in Fort Point, which paid $8.42 million for one parcel with a street address of 40 West Third St., and $4.9 million for a second parcel at 18 West Third St., according to deeds recorded this week in Suffolk County.

Rockland Trust Co. provided $10 million in mortgage financing.

The properties including industrial buildings, parking and the former Coppersmith restaurant sold to Alexandria for $19.6 million in 2018.

Verndale did not respond to a request for comment.

Alexandria executives said last month that they had agreed to sell additional “non-core assets” for $124 million.

Alexandria sold off an Andover office-lab building in February after less than two years of ownership, following a series of big-ticket local dispositions in 2023. They included a 6-acre industrial site in Boston’s Seaport District which never filed development plans, and sold for just over half of what Alexandria paid in 2020.

Ample lab space has become available in the nearby Seaport District amid a decline in leasing activity coupled with major new projects such as Boston Global Investors’ 10 World Trade and BioMed Realty’s 601 Congress St. Among 20 lab buildings spanning over 5.2 million square feet, the Seaport District submarket had a 12.6 percent vacancy rate and 37 percent availability rate at the end of 2023, according to CBRE.

Editor’s note: This report has been updated with the sales price of the 18 West Third St. parcel.