Tishman Speyer CEO Rob Speyer/Photo courtesy of Issues Management Group
A legacy of distrust gave way to optimism about the birth of a new life science industry cluster at the ceremonial opening of Harvard University’s Enterprise Research Campus in Allston.
State Rep. Michael Moran minced no words in saying he “wouldn’t have been caught dead” at a Harvard-sponsored event during the turbulent period after the university quietly acquired properties in Allston for new real estate projects. Harvard now owns a third of the neighborhood.
Moran credited former Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust with meeting Allston residents and easing town-and-gown tensions.
“The first thing she said was, ‘I’m sorry.’ And when somebody actually believes it and you believe them, that means something. She went on for almost 11 years improving the relationship with our community,” Moran said during the ceremony at the One Milestone office-lab tower.
In 1997, Harvard acknowledged its purchase of 52 acres in Allston over a 9-year period through an outside real estate developer, Beal Companies, stealthily establishing a beachhead for future growth in Boston.
The strategy enraged then-Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who blasted the school’s lack of transparency and threatened to block approvals for developments. Harvard officials defended their actions, saying that secrecy was key to avoiding inflated asking prices from property owners.
In 2019, Harvard Allston Land Company, the university’s real estate development arm overseeing the project, selected New York-based Tishman Speyer to oversee the first phase of a new mixed-use Enterprise Research Campus on Western Avenue across from Harvard Business School.
But approval was delayed significantly while residents and local elected officials pressed Harvard and the developer to increase the percentage of income-restricted units in the housing portion of the project.
Mayor Michelle Wu intervened in 2022, and HALC agreed to include 25 percent affordable units in the Verra Boston complex, and establish a $25 million fund toward affordable housing in the surrounding neighborhood.
The first phase occupies 9.4 acres of the 36-acre Enterprise Research Campus, including the One Milestone office-lab building that will be occupied by the new Roche Genentech Innovation Center this summer.
The mass timber-framed David Rubenstein Treehouse conference center has already become a busy convening spot for business gatherings. The 246-room Atlas Hotel opened in January, and was designed to provide a convenient lodging spot for the conference center’s visitors.
But leasing on the 440,000-square-foot office-lab portion of the project, which broke ground in 2023 has been affected by the widespread decline in demand from life science tenants.
The first deal was struck in early 2025, when Roche’s Genentech subsidiary leased 30,000 square feet. In January, the company announced it would expand its space commitment to 100,000 square feet, and began occupying the building this month.
The Innovation Center at One Milestone will house cardiovascular, renal and metabolism research, along with AI and data science initiatives.
Wu said Harvard’s establishment of a new lab cluster will form a bridge between Cambridge’s Kendall Square biotech hub and Boston’s life science and health care clusters.
“We’re standing next to the most remaining land for development in Boston: more than 100 acres,” Wu said, referring to Harvard’s future Beacon Yards project site. “This campus shows what the rest of it can be.”
Tishman Speyer formed a partnership with Bellco Capital to create Breakthrough Properties, a life science-focused developer that is selling an approved development site to Gillette for its new headquarters in Boston’s Fort Point.
“We set out to deliver the best real estate for the best scientists of our generation: spaces for people whose work can literally change our world,” Tishman Speyer CEO Rob Speyer said. “This is it.”
Editor’s note: This report has been updated to correct the acreage of the first phase of the ERC is 9.4 acres and that Breakthrough Properties intends to sell, not develop, the Fort Point property for the new Gillette headquarters.
Image courtesy of Harvard Allston Land Co.
