News
SCIENCE IN THE 'BURBS
August 8, 2011
| There is life science lab life beyond Cambridge and Boston. King Street Properties founder Tom Ragno tells us he and partner Steve Lynch are developing some of the larger suburban labs in Lexington and Waltham, where MIT whiz kids move when they grow up and want to raise little whiz kids. |
 |
| Tom says he expects to start permitting later this year for a new 100k SF lab that King Street hopes to add to a 20-acre, 180k SF complex of lab/office buildings at 4 Hartwell Place and 101 and 113 Hartwell Ave in Lexington that it acquired building by building over the past 12 months. They have hired DeMella Shaffer as the architect. The 103k SF building at 113 Hartwell, which King Street purchased for $6.4M from a JV of Neelon and AEW, is undergoing a $23.5M gut renovation to be completed this summer. A year ago, it purchased a vacant 101 Hartwell from AMB for $2.3M. King Street renovated the 40k SF, one-story structure that's now 82% leased by two Kendall Square relos: T2 Biosystems and Ab Pro. |
 |
| Still expanding in Lexington, Tom and Steve (above) have agreed to buy 4 Hartwell, although they can't disclose the price or seller yet. While Cambridge and Boston are still the major life science and research centers, Tom and Steve say locations like suburban Lexington with its high-quality public schools are appealing to scientists in their 30s who are raising families. (Do we detect aHoney, I Shrunk the Kids reboot?) They have also found demand for labs they developed in Waltham as Bear Hill Business Park. In January ?08, the seven buildings (totaling 225k SF) were mostly offices with 5% lab space and were 60% leased. Now, the complex is 30% labs and 85 % leased. |
 |
| But asset manager Leah Harsfield now has to dive into the more gritty environs of Cambridge?s Fresh Pond district (and dive into more paperwork from the looks of that stack). In April, King Street paid $6.4M for 42k SF at 733 Concord Ave near Smith Place. The building is fully occupied for the next three years by E Ink, a firm founded by an MIT scientist, which developed the technology behind the e-readers including the Kindle and the Nook. Tom tells us King Street is looking for more property to buy in Fresh Pond. The area that borders Belmont and Arlington is one of the last undeveloped Cambridge submarkets. For tech firms not thrilled about paying the high rents in Kendall Square, Tom says Fresh Pond is a ?release valve.? |
