Lendlease, Ivanhoé Cambridge Buy Boston Site, Plan $500M Lab Project
Major real estate players want a piece of Boston’s life sciences pie, spending $67M for a development-ready parcel at Boston Landing in Allston.
Ivanhoé Cambridge, the real estate arm of a Canadian pension fund, and Australian construction giant Lendlease closed on 60 Guest St. Wednesday, acquiring the site from New Balance’s NB Development Group, the companies announced. The joint venture has proposed a 320K SF, nine-story office and lab building near New Balance’s global headquarters and practice facilities for the Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins.
"Investing alongside Lendlease, who has a breadth of experience in constructing life science and research facilities, will allow both partners to grow their exposure in this sector,” Ivanhoé Cambridge President and CEO Nathalie Palladitcheff said in a statement.
Lendlease Americas CEO Denis Hickey in a statement called Ivanhoé Cambridge a best-in-class capital partner, and the firm touted its construction and management business’s involvement in more than 350 life sciences facilities across 17M SF.
The project will be designed by Boston-based architecture firm SGA and construction is expected to begin in June 2022, the companies said. The partnership in a statement said the project will have an estimated $500M end value upon completion.
The project is Ivanhoé's first life sciences investment in the Boston area. New Balance, whose global headquarters stands over the Massachusetts Turnpike, recently sold its former world headquarters nearby at 20 Guest St. for $72M to a joint venture of Boston-based Griffith Properties and D.C.-based Artemis Real Estate Partners.
The acquisition moves forward one of the last remaining development parcels for the Boston Landing Master Plan, and joins the wave of life sciences development across Boston where tenant demand in the fourth quarter of 2020 exceeded 4.5M SF, according to JLL. The red-hot market saw 94% of deliveries in 2020 leased, with 81% of 2021 deliveries already spoken for.
