Part Three Of A Three-Part Series 

By the 1990s, Cambridge had become the destination of choice for biotechs.

The “serendipitous event,” as developer David Clem terms it, for biotech in Cambridge was the city’s adoption of National Health Institute guidelines on rDNA research as part of local regulations. First considered an impediment to lab construction, it instead became a red carpet.

“It provided an accepted process for these laboratories to be approved,” explained Cambridge Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Joseph Tulimieri.

In 1983, Massachusetts Institute of Technology chose Forest City Enterprises to develop 27 acres of property west of its campus. Forest City’s University Park at MIT would grow to 2.3 million square feet of residential and lab space – beginning with the renovation of the Jackson Building, originally constructed in 1911. University Park would house numerous biotechs, including Alkermes and Ariad Pharmaceuticals.

By 1990, the industry had grown from a few dozen initial employees to about 12,000. More than 50 companies dotted the Cambridge landscape. But it was Genzyme that built the era’s signature building on the Cambridge biotech landscape.

Genzyme – founded in 1981 – was initially located at 85 Kneeland St. Boston. In 1989, it moved lab operations and its headquarters to One Kendall Square.

Termeer’s Tenacity

But the company needed a manufacturing plant for its first approved drug.

Sandwiched between Western Avenue, Cambridge Street and Storrow Drive in Allston was a plot of land recently purchased from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority by Harvard University.

Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer wanted his factory there – where everyone would see it. The site posed numerous issues. It abutted a Mass Pike entrance and an historic Massachusetts District Commission road, had a120-foot Massachusetts Water Resources Authority aquifer tunnel beneath it and a train track through its center.

Gov. William Weld backed the project, however, which was seen as helping the struggling construction industry, and construction began on March 28, 1991.

“Every Friday at 3 p.m., Henri Termeer would drive into the site in his baby blue Porsche to check on progress,” recalled David Beane, head of D.C. Beane & Associates Construction Co. in Boston.

“The project was complex, but all the right people were working on it. Nineteen months later it was built,” he said, “looking more like a cathedral than a factory.”

Along Came Pharma

Swedish-based Astra Pharmaceuticals quickly outgrew its small lab on Sidney Street in Cambridge, established in 1995. John Hennessy, now AstraZeneca’s general manager in Waltham, recalls the company’s dilemma: “We could build up in Cambridge or build out in [the suburbs]. We had located a site in Waltham that had four empty lots on 64 acres that had once been a pig farm. Our CEO said, ‘Let’s buy the whole four lots.’”

In 1996, the decision was made to buy the entire parcel to ensure the company had room to grow. A Swedish architectural firm was brought in to master-plan the campus. The initial building was completed in 2000, with two additions subsequently built.

“We learned a lot from the Swedish designers,” recalled Steve Carbonneau, president of the Hopkinton-based, life science-focused construction company The Richmond Group. “Their systems are all about energy efficiency and utility.”

“Scientists and researchers [look] for open and interactive lab environments, arranged in a manner that encourages collaboration,” added Robert Zverina, principal at Architectural Resources Cambridge.

In 2002, Novartis moved its global drug discovery and research operations to 100 Technology Square in Cambridge. Novartis immediately needed room for 700 additional researchers and signed a 45-year lease for the NECCO wafer building at 250 Main St.

“Cambridge was no longer an incubator for start-ups and mid-sized companies spawning from the surrounding hospitals and academia,” Carbonneau commented.

Sharing The Wealth

Boston shared in the growth of the biopharma industry.

In 2004, New Jersey-based Merck constructed a 12-story, 600,000-square-foot research lab in the Longwood Medical Area.

It would quickly have a neighbor. Clem, whose Athenaeum Group had long passed from the scene, had returned as the founder of Hanover, N.H.-based Lyme Properties in 1998. Lyme emerged as a development force in Massachusetts life science construction and in 2008 completed the 704,149-square-foot Center for Life Science next to Merck’s building.

New lab developers had arrived. In 1999, California-based Alexandria Real Estate Equities acquired assets in Worcester’s Biotechnology Research Park. Alexandria today is the biggest lab operator in Massachusetts. In 2005, San Diego-based BioMed Realty Trust began buying Lyme Properties buildings. By 2007, it had acquired the entire Lyme portfolio – about 2.4 million square feet of lab and office space.

No arrival in Massachusetts was more heralded than that of Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS). In 2005, the Massachusetts Office of Business Development was approached by a corporate site selector whose client, known only as “Project Hummingbird,” desired 100 acres of land for a biologics manufacturing plant. “Hummingbird” was Bristol Myers Squibb, and the state’s team convinced the pharmaceutical giant that the former Fort Devens, 40 miles west of Cambridge, was the best site for its biggest capital investment. It took special legislation to approve funds for new infrastructure to support the $750 million BMS facility, but Massachusetts and Devens won the project.

Then, Now, Tomorrow

The Vertex Pharmaceuticals buildings under construction on Fan Pier in Boston will cost about $800 million to build, stand 18 stories high and include 1.1 million square feet of lab and office space.

Pfizer plans a new, 180,000-square-foot, $300 million research lab on MIT land at 610 Main St. in Cambridge. Novartis is constructing a $600 million, 580,000-square-foot lab, office and retail building at 181 Mass Ave., and renovation of 640 Memorial Drive is under way. The major tenant in the former Ford Motor assembly plant, constructed in 1916, is drug development giant Sanofi, which acquired Genzyme last year for $20.1 billion.

The buildings in Cambridge, Boston, Worcester and surrounding suburbs that house the burgeoning biotech industry serve not only as monuments to the creativity of the past, but as keystones to Massachusetts’ future.

Peter Abair is director of economic development and global affairs at the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. Email: peter.abair@massbio.org