
New Xmbly Developer Seeks More Lab Space
A leading life science developer is taking over redevelopment of an Assembly Square site with plans for a larger office-lab project than was originally approved by Somerville officials in 2018.
A leading life science developer is taking over redevelopment of an Assembly Square site with plans for a larger office-lab project than was originally approved by Somerville officials in 2018.
Greater Boston’s life science industry continues to generate demand for office and lab space as 81 firms seek more than 2.6 million square feet in the region, according to a commercial brokerage research report.
Two months after a six-building, 1 million-square-foot multifamily and lab complex was pitched for Cambridge’s Alewife Quadrangle neighborhood, another developer is joining the effort to revamp the industrial area near Belmont
With a combination of low vacancy, high demand and some of the highest asking rents in the country, life science properties in the Boston metro are more desirable than ever for investment firms, both large and small.
New York developer Tishman Speyer will lead Harvard University’s big foray into life science development in Allston.
DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners, Leggat McCall Properties and Shawmut Design and Construction celebrated the official groundbreaking of the first of an expected wave of life science and office buildings in Somerville’s Boynton Yards, an industrial neighborhood near the city’s Union Square and Cambridge’s Kendall Square.
A little over a month after it cut a little over 500,000 square feet from the project, Millennium Partners has filed plans with the Boston Planning & Development Agency for a 380,800-square-foot laboratory/office building at 2 Harbor St. in the Seaport.
After Natasha Pirman’s employer moved to a new campus in 2017, she began thinking about a career change. The biochemistry Ph.D.’s knack for organizing their new workspaces translated well into the world of architecture, where local firms are looking for new hires with life science backgrounds as they pursue work designing office and labs to satisfy the industry’s relentless expansion.
Starting a company and raising capital to develop a therapy is hard enough work to begin with. Scientific entrepreneurs are then faced with high rents and lab construction costs that are two to three times what an office would be.
Think of incubators as the “WeWork of the life sciences industry.” They provide a turnkey lab environment that can range from a single lab bench to a large, private lab that accommodates 100 people.
Several new trends have emerged from the area’s lab space shortage: defensive leasing, consolidating office space in labs and life sciences tenants being pushed into markets close to East Cambridge.
As Doble Engineering prepares to relocate to a new headquarters in Marlborough, a developer is eyeing its Watertown property for a 213,500-square-foot office and lab building.
Many times, lab managers and facility staff are left out of the planning phase. Often, by the time they are brought in, they are faced with solving problems that could have been avoided if only their voices were heard earlier in the process.
A 9-story, 289,000-square-foot class A office and lab building that broke ground in July will become the largest life science development in Somerville.
A Pfizer spinoff has leased nearly 60,000 square feet at Cambridge Crossing, which has now leased 1.3 million square feet to office and lab tenants.
The success of Boston Landing – which leased brand-new lab space to Roche Diagnostics, incubator SmartLabs and Proteostasis Therapeutics in 2017 – put Allston on the map as a budding life science cluster. Now, life science developers have begun to outbid multifamily competitors for development sites.
Due to the scarcity of developable sites in key urban markets, both office and lab developers are getting more creative and increasingly pursuing opportunities outside of traditional business districts, like the South End, South Boston, Somerville and Allston-Brighton.
A pair of speculative lab projects by well-known local developers are ramping up this summer in Somerville’s Union Square and Boynton Yards, the next neighborhoods to stake a claim as a life science startup landing spots.
A Cambridge biotech startup is moving to Cummings Properties’ TradeCenter 128 complex in Woburn as it prepares to begin clinical trials next spring.
Developers that bought a South Boston warehouse property for $25 million just over a year ago are preparing to cash out after gaining approval for an office-lab complex on the primed-for-life science A Street corridor.