“For the past two decades, since we first listed on the New York Stock Exchange we have focused on human health, not from a service perspective, but by providing infrastructure investment for new technologies and thought leadership,” Joel S. Marcus, CEO and founder of the REIT, tells GlobeSt.com. Human health has two challenges, he continued — disease and hunger. Up until the Alexandria Center for AgTech, its focus has been on disease.

An AgTech Accelerator

The REIT has put some thought into its additional focus (it is still very much involved in infrastructure for disease research, Marcus says).

Over the last three to five years it had noticed that industry had begun to coalesce, with the technology and capital cooperating for the first time, Marcus said. Then last year it launched the AgTech Accelerator, a startup accelerator vehicle dedicated to emerging agricultural technologies, with $11.5 million in initial closing commitments. Located in Research Triangle Park, the AgTech Accelerator has reached $25 million in commitments and has made a number of investments.

By 2017, Alexandria Real Estate Equities felt it was ready to begin the mega campus it had been planning for the Cornwallis site. It is currently less than 20% pre-leased — the AgTech Accelerator among the tenants — but there is a waiting list for the space, according to the REIT. “When we started Mission Bay [in San Francisco] we had one million square feet with no pre-leasing so I've never considered that a good indicator,” Marcus says.

Another reason the REIT is not worried: Alexandria's current asset base in Research Triangle Park is more than 1 million square feet and it is nearly 98% leased to tenants that include multinational companies such as Bayer Crop Science, Medicago, Monsanto and Novozymes as well as growth- and early-stage companies such as Benson Hill Biosystems and Mimetics.

Market Fundamentals

Finally, the life sciences' larger market fundamentals are more than reassuring. Low vacancy rates
combined with increasing tenant demand have enabled landlords to command high asking rents, according to JLL's latest Life Sciences Outlook.

To be precise, nine of the top 10 US life science clusters currently have single-digit direct vacancy rates.

Another trend JLL highlights is that to lure much-needed workers in the Millennial generation, life sciences companies increasingly seeking out more amenity rich spaces that also have social spaces for downtime and mingling amongst co-workers.

JLL wrote:

Accordingly, this creates a need for knowledgeable landlords who are not only familiar with the specialized space requirements of life sciences companies, but are also intimate with the needs of their tenants. Major landlords such as, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, are redefining suburban lab space.

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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC–Alexandria Real Estate Equities is taking its life-science-mega-campus-development show on the road, this time to North Carolina.

The Pasadena, CA-based REIT has built several major life science and technology campuses over the years in all corners of the US. Now it has set its sights on Research Triangle Park, where it recently acquired the Alexandria Center for AgTech, located at 3054 East Cornwallis Rd., next to a site the REIT already owns, 6 Davis Dr. The first phase of the project is the redevelopment of the Cornwallis site into a 175,000-square feet into office/laboratory and greenhouse facilities as well as a number of competitive amenities (more on this in a moment).

The development of both campuses will eventually form a one-million-square foot mega campus that will focus agriculture technology and its related ecosystem.

While the development of a mega campus for the science sector is old hat for Alexandria Real Estate is hardly new, the agtech orientation is a bit of a departure from its earlier focus.

“For the past two decades, since we first listed on the New York Stock Exchange we have focused on human health, not from a service perspective, but by providing infrastructure investment for new technologies and thought leadership,” Joel S. Marcus, CEO and founder of the REIT, tells GlobeSt.com. Human health has two challenges, he continued — disease and hunger. Up until the Alexandria Center for AgTech, its focus has been on disease.

An AgTech Accelerator

The REIT has put some thought into its additional focus (it is still very much involved in infrastructure for disease research, Marcus says).

Over the last three to five years it had noticed that industry had begun to coalesce, with the technology and capital cooperating for the first time, Marcus said. Then last year it launched the AgTech Accelerator, a startup accelerator vehicle dedicated to emerging agricultural technologies, with $11.5 million in initial closing commitments. Located in Research Triangle Park, the AgTech Accelerator has reached $25 million in commitments and has made a number of investments.

By 2017, Alexandria Real Estate Equities felt it was ready to begin the mega campus it had been planning for the Cornwallis site. It is currently less than 20% pre-leased — the AgTech Accelerator among the tenants — but there is a waiting list for the space, according to the REIT. “When we started Mission Bay [in San Francisco] we had one million square feet with no pre-leasing so I've never considered that a good indicator,” Marcus says.

Another reason the REIT is not worried: Alexandria's current asset base in Research Triangle Park is more than 1 million square feet and it is nearly 98% leased to tenants that include multinational companies such as Bayer Crop Science, Medicago, Monsanto and Novozymes as well as growth- and early-stage companies such as Benson Hill Biosystems and Mimetics.

Market Fundamentals

Finally, the life sciences' larger market fundamentals are more than reassuring. Low vacancy rates
combined with increasing tenant demand have enabled landlords to command high asking rents, according to JLL's latest Life Sciences Outlook.

To be precise, nine of the top 10 US life science clusters currently have single-digit direct vacancy rates.

Another trend JLL highlights is that to lure much-needed workers in the Millennial generation, life sciences companies increasingly seeking out more amenity rich spaces that also have social spaces for downtime and mingling amongst co-workers.

JLL wrote:

Accordingly, this creates a need for knowledgeable landlords who are not only familiar with the specialized space requirements of life sciences companies, but are also intimate with the needs of their tenants. Major landlords such as, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, are redefining suburban lab space.

Save

Save

Save

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