The New Office/Lab Thread

stellarfun said:
Looking at the Colliers data for other metros (besides the Bay area, supra) it would appear that the astounding number was not pulled out of the thin air, so to speak.. For example, for New Jersey, nothing currently under construction, 3,239,000 square feet planned. Seattle 1,390,000 square feet under construction, 376,000 square feet planned..

Regardless of what number you choose to use with respect to the number of square feet per employee for a lab building, the number of new employees who will work in the 60+ million sq ft of lab space being constructed or planned, is in the low six figures. Assuming a lab building has ten occupiable floors, the footprint for an additional 50 million square feet is over 1,100 acres. Assuming all new construction, and no conversions, some/much of this planned construction will be outside of Boston proper, Cambridge.
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I'm not disputing the veracity of the 52 million sq feet as much as wondering what projects are included, and whether anyone had a supporting breakout, etc.

52 million sq ft really is astounding - for context Collier's Q421 report says Boston has 66 million sq ft of office space total, today.

So the amount of lab space under construction + proposed is roughly comparable to the amount of office space that exists in Boston today. Nuts.
 
Max Power said:
I'm not disputing the veracity of the 52 million sq feet as much as wondering what projects are included, and whether anyone had a supporting breakout, etc.

52 million sq ft really is astounding - for context Collier's Q421 report says Boston has 66 million sq ft of office space total, today.

So the amount of lab space under construction + proposed is roughly comparable to the amount of office space that exists in Boston today. Nuts.
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Part of the answer may be that a lot of the planned new space is not slotted for Boston/Cambridge. I went to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council member page, and looked at the first page of a 52 page member list.

https://www.massbio.org/member-category/0257dcb8-824c-e311-ba25-b4b52f662bc2/

12 companies named: one located in Boston, two in Cambridge, two in Worcester, most of the others scattered along a Rte. 128 arc.
 
Oh it definitely is. I believe there are not one but two ~million sq ft campuses proposed in Woburn, alone, for instance.

And to jklo's point - a large portion has to be from office-> to lab conversion. (I can't imagine sitting on a vacant suburban office park in this WFH era while some of the highest rents on the planet are available with a change in use).

But the scale here - it's still staggering. It's literally hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs in the works.
 
Max Power said:
But the scale here - it's still staggering. It's literally hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs in the works
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I don't think lab techs make that much... and the square footage per employee is pretty high I think as well. It's really just how widespread it is.
 
Thought I'd post this here. Underscores how new technology is transforming biotechnology.

A new tool speeds up development of vaccines and other pharmaceutical products by more than one million times while minimizing costs.

In search of pharmaceutical agents such as new vaccines, industry will routinely scan thousands of related candidate molecules. A novel technique allows this to take place on the nano scale, minimizing use of materials and energy. The work is published in the prestigious journal Nature Chemistry.

More than 40,000 different molecules can be synthesized and analyzed within an area smaller than a pinhead. The method, developed through a highly interdisciplinary research effort in Denmark, promises to drastically reduce the amounts of material, energy, and economic cost for pharmaceutical companies.
....
“The volumes are so small that the use of material can be compared to using one liter of water and one kilogram of material instead of the entire volumes of water in all oceans to test material corresponding to the entire mass of Mount Everest. This is an unprecedented save in effort, material, manpower, and energy,”
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“Saving infinitely amounts of time, energy and manpower would be fundamentally important for any synthesis development and evaluation of pharmaceuticals,” says PhD Student Mette G. Malle, lead author of the article, and currently Postdoc researcher at Harvard University, USA.
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Suspect he won't be leaving Cambridge / Allston.

The breakthrough involves integration of elements from normally quite distant disciplines: synthetic biochemistry, nanotechnology, DNA synthesis, combinational chemistry, and even Machine Learning which is an AI (artificial intelligence) discipline.

“No single element in our solution is completely new, but they have never been combined so seamlessly,” explains Nikos Hatzakis.

The method provides results within just seven minutes.
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https://scitechdaily.com/revolution...t-of-vaccines-by-more-than-one-million-times/
 
jklo said:
I don't think lab techs make that much... and the square footage per employee is pretty high I think as well. It's really just how widespread it is.
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Not super high, but not terrible either. Experienced ones will make 90+k
 
OK, this is getting ridiculous. The city needs to put the brakes on because this locomotive is speeding out of control.

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Top 20 US Metros for Life Science Companies in 2022

No surprises who ranked #1...

1. Boston Metropolitan Area

The Boston metropolitan area ranked first with a total of 75.35 points out of 100 by earning top scores across several metrics. Notably, BLS data showed that the Boston life sciences labor force was the largest among the metro areas we analyzed. And, the metro also ranked sixth for life sciences educational attainment, with 840,200 of residents aged 25 years or older holding at least a bachelor’s degree in science and engineering and/or engineering-related fields.

Advantages to the real estate market were also reflected in the metro’s best scores: Specifically, the life sciences sector was represented across roughly 24.8 million square feet of office space in Boston, which made it the largest life sciences real estate market out of all of the entries in this ranking. Moreover, nearly 14 million square feet of that was LEED-certified, an indicator for which the Boston metropolitan statistical area (MSA) also earned the top score. Plus, the life sciences market here is poised for significant further expansion, with an additional 23.8 million square feet of upcoming projects currently under construction, as well as in the planned and prospective stages.
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www.cbsnews.com

Old Lord & Taylor stores at 3 Mass. malls to become lab space

Former retail spaces are making way for lab facilities at three malls in Massachusetts.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com

Not sure where to put this, but the Lord & Taylor at the Natick Mall and the Burlington Mall and the South Shore Plaza are being redeveloped into (surprise surprise) lab space. I believe this is in addition to the the former Neiman Marcus at the Natick Mall which is also being redeveloped into lab space.
 
jklo said:
www.cbsnews.com

Old Lord & Taylor stores at 3 Mass. malls to become lab space

Former retail spaces are making way for lab facilities at three malls in Massachusetts.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com

Not sure where to put this, but the Lord & Taylor at the Natick Mall and the Burlington Mall and the South Shore Plaza are being redeveloped into (surprise surprise) lab space. I believe this is in addition to the the former Neiman Marcus at the Natick Mall which is also being redeveloped into lab space.
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I hate to say it but I'm glad Dicks Sporting Goods got into the Boston L&T location before it became lab space! I wouldn't be surprised if the Hynes Auditorium is the next conversion to lab space!
 
xec said:
OK, this is getting ridiculous. The city needs to put the brakes on because this locomotive is speeding out of control.

If this results in a re-cladding for our friend on the right I will call it a win. No idea how the ceiling heights here work for lab though.
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goody said:
No idea how the ceiling heights here work for lab though.
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Yup, probably going to be some low ceilings in that lab space! The floor-to-floor height of a steel-framed lab building is typically at least 15', with a 5-6' drop ceiling to accommodate mechanicals. Office buildings have both lower floor-to-floor heights and lower drop ceilings.
 
curcuas said:
Would be amazing if Chelsea gave variances to housing this dense that they desperately need.
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I don't see any developers asking to build housing that dense. 11 stories would not be in a construction cost sweet spot for housing, at least not in Chelsea.
 
City Council President Roy Avellaneda said the project will be the first one that falls under the city’s new community mitigation guidance, and could bring in over $4 million in linkage fees for Chelsea, money that can be used for any number of community improvements.

Hell yes and yay for Chelsea! The city could definitely use the linkage fees along with the property taxes that this project will bring into the city. I sure hope that Chelsea can attract more R & D, Lab, and related developments.
 
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JeffDowntown said:
I don't see any developers asking to build housing that dense. 11 stories would not be in a construction cost sweet spot for housing, at least not in Chelsea.
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An 11 story lab is around the same height as an 18-20 story residential.
 
DZH22 said:
An 11 story lab is around the same height as an 18-20 story residential.
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Chelsea could be building 5+1's the same way Everett does or even larger buildings next to it's clearly better transit (SL3 / Commuter Rail).
 
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