Dive Brief:
- Australian developer Lendlease and Montreal, Canada-based real estate management firm Ivanhoé Cambridge have broken ground on a $500 million life science project in Boston.
- The two companies joined local officials last week to turn dirt on the Forum, a nine-story, 350,000-square-foot project located in the mixed-use Boston Landing development in the city’s Allston-Brighton neighborhood.
- Milford, Massachusetts-based Consigli will serve as the project’s general contractor and BR+A Consulting Engineers as project engineer. The project is slated to finish in 2024, according to Lendlease.
Dive Insight:
The project will have 60% of its space dedicated to labs and 40% to office space.
Demand for life science buildings has outpaced supply, as growth in vaccine development contributes to larger trends in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. While offices have faced high vacancy rates as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, life science projects, especially in hubs like Boston and San Diego, have not.
But life science projects require more consideration for unique building codes, lots of planning upfront and specialized infrastructure, making them a complex undertaking.
This is the first life science project for the developer team, but likely won’t be the last. Earlier in 2022, Ivanhoé Cambridge announced a separate joint venture with an initial equity investment of $500 million to develop in high-growth life science clusters around the U.S.
