|
 |
Make Way for Wet Labs
|
Making available
leasable wet lab space is the next link in the BioBelt chain.
By Peter Downs
The St. Louis area is getting ready to take the next step to becoming
a world center in plant and life sciences: private developers are
on the verge of building speculative wet lab space.
The Desco Group has purchased the Ford Motor Company’s first assembly
plant in St. Louis with an eye towards converting it into 230,000
square feet of laboratory and office space for growing biotech companies.
The building is on Forest Park Boulevard east of the Washington
University Medical Center.
McEagle Development is close to announcing an agreement to construct
18,000 square feet of laboratory space on Page Boulevard. Chairman
Paul McKee says the company also is planning for two buildings totaling
115,000 square feet in its WingHaven development in St. Charles
that will have space suitable for wet labs.
And HOK is working to attract to St. Louis a major wet labs developer
with whom it works elsewhere.
All of this activity comes on top of a 35,000-square-foot expansion
of the Center for Emerging Technologies (CET), a business incubator
for technology companies, across the street from the old Ford plant
Desco bought, by The Korte Company.
And, on the other end of the scale, McCarthy Building Companies
is constructing two large research facilities for local corporate
and institutional clients. About a mile east of CET, it is building
a 133,000-square-foot life sciences research center, designed by
HOK for Sigma-Aldrich Corp. On Monsanto’s corporate campus in West
County, McCarthy is building the 170,000-square-foot Donald Danforth
Plant Sciences Center.
Last year, the RCGA commissioned the Battelle Memorial Institute
of Columbus, Ohio, to prepare a report evaluating St. Louis’ strengths
in plant and life sciences, and what it would take to become a world
leader in each. Battelle noted that 75 percent of all food production
in the United States occurs within 500 miles of St. Louis. It found
that the life sciences community in St. Louis included nearly 1,200
firms with 23,000 employees, and that area universities spent $360
million a year on life sciences research, both of which compared
favorably with the numbers from nine recognized centers for life
sciences activity in North America and Israel.
But, it also noted a couple of roadblocks to realizing the BioBelt
vision. One was a lack of local venture capital to invest in biotech
startups. Another was an absence of leasable wet lab space.
Business leaders moved immediately to address the lack of venture
capital, and that problem has been taken care of, says McKee, chairman
of several companies and a member of the biotech group in the RCGA.
“We’ve raised more than $350 million in venture capital for plant
and life sciences,” he says.
That left speculative wet lab space, says William Odell, director
of the technology group at HOK in St. Louis. While one company’s
wet lab may differ drastically from another’s, the generic definition
used by biotech boosters in St. Louis is laboratory space equipped
with fume hoods and sinks.
Such space has several characteristics. It has concrete floors capable
of bearing substantially more weight than the typical office building
floor can bear; high ceilings; high speed data access; heavy-duty
heating, ventilation, and cooling systems; higher roof-load capacity
to bear the weight of that equipment; enhanced environmental control
technology; and loading docks.
Such space is needed both for companies that have outgrown incubators
and need to scale up their processes for commercial production,
and for large companies that are prepared to move beyond the discovery
phase with a new compound, Odell says. “Once the clock starts ticking
on the patent, they need to work quickly. They don’t have time to
build new space.”
A regional market study that Development Strategies recently completed
for the RCGA tried to assess the near-term demand for wet lab space
from companies already here in St. Louis. However, Dr. Robert Calcaterra,
president and CEO of the Nidus Center for Scientific Enterprise,
a biotech incubator that works in conjunction with the Danforth
Plant Science Center, says biotech entrepreneurs elsewhere are investigating
moving to St. Louis, though he won’t name any names. One of the
their concerns is whether there will be lab space they can lease
when they come here.
“Some of the potential companies are large enough to take a substantial
amount of space, say 75,000 to 100,000 square feet within the next
three years,” Calcaterra says. “If we don’t start creating that
space now, it won’t be available when they’re ready for it.”
Odell says the interest in St. Louis is phenomenal. “We’re in discussions
with several pharmaceutical companies who have never before left
the East Coast about designing research centers that they want to
put in St. Louis. That would have been unheard of two years ago.”
He also declined to say who was involved in those discussions.
No one seems to know for sure how much biotech construction has
taken place, or how much is planned. The two largest projects currently
under construction contain more than 300,000 square feet of research
space, and will create 400 to 500 jobs. In addition, Paric Corp.,
McKee’s construction company, has built wet labs for eight clients
in the last two years, says Ron Landolt, vice president of Paric’s
interiors construction group. Undoubtedly other companies have built
biotech space, too. In the planning stages are at least 363,000
square feet of speculative laboratory space in four buildings, and,
according to Odell, an $89 million life sciences research facility
for Pharmacia and a major university life sciences research center.
A survey is underway to try to determine the volume of past and
planned biotech projects.
“In our opinion, there hasn’t been space available on a commercial
lease basis, just space created within the large institutional users’
domains,” says Diane Davis, vice president of planning and operations
for The DESCO Group. “That’s why we’re looking at the market so
intensely. There’s a natural growth pattern in the industry. If
space cannot be found in the St. Louis area companies will relocate
and move out of the area.”
And, if developers follow through and create the space?
It could go either way, Odell says. “Either it will collapse, or
in 10 years we’ll look back and be amazed at what has happened.
I’m optimistic.”
Wanted: Wet Lab Space
|
A
just-completed study by Development Strategies documented
a near-term demand from plant and life science companies for
leasable lab space that totals 252,000 square feet, plus a
need for additional office, warehouse and production space.
This estimate is the result of a survey of already-existing
emerging area life sciences firms. Beyond this, if St. Louis’
BioBelt recruitment efforts are successful, the study projects
that the region could capture up to 4.5 million square feet
of the growing national plant and life sciences demand.
“I think people were impressed that we were able to document
as much potential demand as we were able to document, says
Richard Ward, president of Development Strategies. “We don’t
really have an established market today...and I don’t think
people had any idea what the real answer would be.”
Ward notes that in addition to the imputed demand from already
existing St. Louis life sciences firms, there is enormous
growth potential in the industry. If St. Louis builds facilities
to address the expressed needs of current companies and they
stay and thrive in the region and in turn attract companies
from out of town, the region could dramatically increase its
market share in just five years. In this scenario, the current
1.5 million square feet of total leasable facilities is estimated
to increase to 4.5 million square feet.
One of those who was impressed by these figures is Douglas
Lozier, who advises lenders and developers of biotech lab
space nationally for CB Richard Ellis in San Diego. He was
in St. Louis in early September to scout out the potential
for bringing real estate development in the bioscience arena
to St. Louis.
Lozier says St. Louis is in about the same position San Diego
was in 16 years ago. Heavy industry has downsized in St. Louis,
just like the defense industry cutback San Diego. The industry
that filled the economic void there was life science. “Today,
there are 300 to 400 life science companies and 8 million
square feet of biotech space.” It took 20 years to get that,
he says, but it could have been done a lot quicker.
“The mistake San Diego made was in not building the infrastructure...If
you can’t accommodate companies’ physical needs, you will
lose them to elsewhere,” and that has happened in San Diego.
The wet labs study by Development Strategies is evidence that
“The RCGA and others have taken the time to recognize our
experience...we can help the region leapfrog some of the mistakes
we made,” Lozier says.
The study was commissioned by the RCGA, and jointly funded
by the RCGA, the Danforth Foundation, and the development
community. Development Strategies surveyed 170 plant and life
science companies in St. Louis by mail and telephone, to find
out what they thought their space needs would be, and then
summed the responses to arrive at its initial estimate. The
focus was on small, growing companies—companies that are likely
to lease space, since it was assumed that major companies
such as Monsanto and Sigma-Aldrich will build their own space.
The St. Louis potential share of the overall national market
was also estimated by the consultants.
With a response of about 25 percent of the companies, estimated
need for 252,000 square feet of lab space “is a real conservative...bottom
line estimate,” says Ward.
The original Plant and Life Sciences Industry Cluster Study
by the Battelle Institute had documented the extraordinary
potential for this industry cluster, but noted that a major
variable in other markets was the amount of physical infrastructure
available to accommodate the industry, says Dick Fleming,
president and CEO of the RCGA. In short, “Fast-growing plant
and life sciences companies need both spec space and customized
space as they ‘graduate’ from university research labs and
advanced technology incubators.”
By analogy, “If there is no wet lab space to accommodate these
growing companies, they have to move to other cities,” he
says. “We don’t want a Pyrrhic victory. We don’t want to be
immensely successful on the startup side, only to have companies
have to go someplace else as they grow. We want the marketplace
to anticipate their unique real estate needs.”
“Our underlining assumption is that with a well thought out
strategy, St. Louis can pretty dramatically jump-start the
infrastructure in a relatively short period of time.” For
example, the study notes that most of Seattle’s present 4.5
million square feet of comparable space has been built in
the last 24 months.
Lozier says he thinks St. Louis can compete, too. “You have
the components needed for the blossoming of a thriving life
science industry,” he says. Even in a mature market like San
Diego, however, there are very few people who know how to
finance biotech building projects and bring them to fruition.
In December, he is returning to St. Louis for further discussions
about bringing that know-how here. |
Peter Downs is a free-lance writer and editor of Construction
News & Review.
|
|
|
|
|
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|
