Bioscience Center Moves Forward

NEW YORK CITY-City officials have approved a straight-lease transaction for the Alexandria Real Estate Equities in connection with the construction, furnishing and equipping of buildings to be known as the East River Science Park. It will be located on a 4.26-acre on city-owned land at Bellevue Hospital Center.

The campus will be located in the Kips Bay neighborhood, just south of the New York University Medical Center between East 28th and 29th Streets and First Avenue and the FDR Drive. It will be along Manhattan’s medical/life sciences corridor, which is home to Beth Israel Hospital, Hospital for Special Surgery, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Mount Sinai, New York Hospital, Rockefeller University, and Weill Cornell Medical Center.

The project is a major component of the city’s effort to make it a center for the growing life sciences and biotech sectors. The city hopes it will attract companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, research and medical device fields as well as create an estimated 2,000 permanent jobs and 6,000 construction jobs over the next 10 years. Alexandria was chosen after the city issued a Request for Proposals for the project.