There are few better measures of the health of the Massachusetts biotechnology-pharmaceutical industry than the number of laboratory construction projects in the area.
Today, more than 2.5 million square feet of commercial lab space is in development in Cambridge and Boston. Within the last three months, the Vertex building at Fan Pier in Boston, Biogen Idec’s 17 Cambridge Center, and Pfizer’s new space on Main Street in Cambridge have all been topped off. The new Skanska lab building on Second Street Cambridge is finished. On its heels is the new Novartis building on Massachusetts Avenue and Alexandria Center on Binney Street in Cambridge. These projects will increase total commercial lab space in eastern Massachusetts by 12 percent, pushing it well past 20 million square feet.
With all of this new activity in Cambridge and Boston, what are they saying in the suburbs? Not long ago, the suburbs were benefiting by what seemed like an increased migration of Cambridge-grown biopharmas to Route 128 and beyond. Shire Pharmaceuticals began its campus in Lexington in 2008, Alkermes exited Cambridge for Waltham in 2009 and the venerable Biogen Idec, the state’s first biotech, moved its headquarters to Weston in 2010.
Since then, however, most of the activity has been back in Cambridge and Boston. Indeed, the exodus to the suburbs seemed to end on a dramatic note in 2011, when Biogen Idec announced its intention to move back to Cambridge.
Did the elastic snap back?
No. The site selection priorities of biopharma companies depend on the needs of the individual companies and how the different real estate markets meet those needs. The biopharma industry is broad and deep, and the space requirements of its companies vary by where they are in the spectrum of industry types, from early stage drug discovery to research product and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Research companies, large or small, rarely will build their own space. For these, the path of least resistance leads them to where lab buildings already exist. Manufacturing requirements, on the other hand, often need highly customized space. These present opportunities for communities outside the Boston/Cambridge core that have the proper infrastructure, zoning, and developers who are ready and willing to work with prospect companies that need highly specialized and, often, expensive space.
Suburban Appeal
For many biopharmas, a Cambridge address is more than a matter of prestige.
“Close proximity to entrepreneurial biotech firms and leading academic scientists and physicians is very valuable to firms at the cutting edge of translating science into therapies,” states Tom Andrews, senior vice president of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, the region’s biggest lab operator. With seven of the top 15 federally funded research hospitals in the nation in Boston, as well as a young workforce groomed at institutions like MIT, Harvard and BU, the appeal to biopharma companies of a Cambridge or Boston address is evident.
And yet, for the 150 or so biopharma companies in Boston and Cambridge, there are more than 400 in Massachusetts beyond these borders.
Mid- to late-stage drug development companies consider the suburbs as viable options. At some stage, a company’s workforce, once made up of young graduates wanting to continue urban lifestyles, transitions to a more mature workforce, with as many workers with families living in the suburbs as single urbanites tied to the Red Line.
Commercial drug manufacturers, Genzyme (Framingham), Abbott (Worcester), Ipsen (Milford) and Bristol Myers Squibb (Devens), to note a few, have factories well beyond Route 128. For such companies, the hunt for lower costs while still being able to attract desired workers makes locations at or beyond Route 128 appealing. Research product companies as well, such as EMD Millipore, PerkinElmer, and Thermo Fisher are found in the western and northern suburbs. Contract research and manufacturing organizations can be found along the I-495 belt, from Lonza in Hopkinton to PCI Synthesis in Newburyport.
But with the laboratory projects under way in Cambridge and Boston, the inner core of the industry has certainly been reaffirmed.
“One of the great things about this [life sciences] super cluster is the variety of real estate options available,” states Andrews. This ability to appeal to the broadest range of space needs of the industry, whether urban or suburban, helps Massachusetts remain at the leading edge of the industry globally.
Peter Abair is director of economic development and global affairs at the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council (MassBio).
