PMB, Montgomery Plan $280M Life Science Campus in Colorado

Local officials in Superior, CO have approved plans for the 365K SF Cole Creek Innovation Park, a joint venture of healthcare developer PMB and Montgomery Street Partners that will provide highly coveted lab space in Boulder County.

Ground is expected to be broken next summer for the $280M development, which is scheduled to be completed in the third quarter of 2024.

Cole Creek Innovation Park will be the first speculative, purpose-built life science campus in Boulder County, located on one of the last backfill sites in the county, in an area of downtown Superior in proximity to US Highway 36.

Phase one of the project will include an owner-furnished 27K SF specification booth space designed to enable rapid occupancy for growing businesses needing high-quality lab space. This will be followed by three office and laboratory buildings ranging in size from 85K SF to 150K SF, and a fourth building that will have ground-floor retail space.

According to the developers, the buildings will feature efficient floor slabs, floor-to-ground elevations of 16 feet and “flexible infrastructure” to accommodate a variety of office, lab and R&D uses. Shared services will include RODI water, custom lab water, compressed air, glass wash and a lab waste disposal system.

In a statement, Ben Rosenfeld, PMB senior VP of development, said there is significant unmet demand for institutional-quality life science space in Boulder County.

Rosenfeld said the existing inventory in the area largely consists of assets less than 60K SF that have been converted from flexible one-story properties that cannot be expanded to accommodate high-growth life science companies.

CBRE, which will market Cole Creek Innovation Park, said life sciences companies increasingly are looking to locate in the Denver metro and Boulder, but the influx of life sciences players has been stymied by the lack of available lab space in the Boulder area.

According to CBRE research, vacancies in life science properties in Boulder were 0.3% at the end of the second quarters. Newmark estimates the Denver/Boulder life science market to encompass 3.5M SF, with 2022 investments to date already exceeding last year’s total of $491M.

Recent life science deals in the Boulder area have include the acquisition of 9.3-acre parcel, including four buildings, by Breakthrough Properties, a joint venture of Tishman Speyer and Pelco Capital. The partners are planning to develop a biotech campus called Boulder 38 By Breakthrough that will include 164K SF of office, lab and flex space.

In April, Blackstone subsidiary Biomed Realty acquired Flatiron Park, a 1M SF life sciences campus with 22 buildings in Boulder, in a $600M purchase from a partnership of Al Hilal Real Estate, Goldman Sachs and Lionstone Investments.

Biomed plans to invest another $200M to convert office space into new labs on the property.