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20 Overland St./Photo courtesy of Warren Patterson Photography
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute will expand its lab and research space in Boston’s Longwood Medical Area and the Fenway while its office space shrinks under a permanent remote and hybrid workforce model.
The teaching hospital plans to lease more space in the Fenway and LMA between 2024 and 2026, according to the latest institutional master plan submitted to the Boston Planning & Development Agency. Some of the expansion is taking place within the Harvard Institute for Medicine at 4 Blackfan Circle, where Dana-Farber recently signed a sublease for one floor and is in negotiations to lease another floor for wet labs.
At the same time, Dana-Farber continues to convert office space in its existing buildings into research and lab space. Up to 50 percent of its administrative staff will continue to work fully remote, while another 20 to 35 percent works in the office two or three days per week.
“This will allow Dana-Farber to repurpose some of the administrative space for clinical administration and/or dry lab research space,” the plan stated.
The 1.6 million-square-foot campus in the Longwood Medical Area includes six buildings owned by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a condominium unit at 360 Longwood Ave., which is known as Longwood Center.
The hospital’s leased real estate includes space at BioMed Realty’s Center for Life Sciences at 3 Blackfan Circle, lab developer IQHQ’s 21-27 Burlington Ave. and 20 Overland St. in the Fenway, Beacon Capital Partners’ 27 Drydock Ave. in South Boston, the Harvard Institute for Medicine at 4 Blackfan Circle and portions of 360 Longwood Ave. At Longwood Center, Dana-Farber is converting two recently-leased floors into wet lab space.
The institutional master plan describes the hospital system’s anticipated real estate needs through 2034.
Recent lab development in the Fenway has attracted leases from local biotechs startups as well as Longwood Medical Area institutions. In 2023, Children’s Hospital acquired a 268,000-square-foot condominium at 421 Park Drive, a 660,000-square-foot lab tower developed by Alexandria Real Estate Equities and Samuels & Assoc. for $172.5 million.
Dana-Farber’s largest pending real estate project is already under review by the BPDA: a 14-story, 550,000-square-foot cancer care center with capacity for 320 patient beds. The $1.7 billion development at 415-435 Brookline Ave. would replace a Joslin Diabetes Center building.
