Mass Innovation Labs Inks Deal For Boston Landing Space
Mass Innovation Labs is expanding to Boston Landing, a sports-focused, transit-oriented development rapidly emerging as a lower-cost alternative to Kendall Square.
The company will take 84K SF at 40 Guest St. at NB Development Group’s 15-acre mixed-use complex, it announced Monday.
The building will also be the home of the Boston Celtics' training and practice facility. The biotech startup accelerator said its new facility will be unique in that it will focus on meeting the needs of biotech companies, as it already does, as well as technology companies looking for space and operating programs.
“We are thrilled to extend our expertise to the technology industry, and the Boston Landing location is an ideal synergy of companies that create breakthrough products, services and technologies,” MIL CEO and co-founder Amrit Chaudhuri said in a prepared statement. “Through our Cambridge location, we have demonstrated that we know how to provide the right support for businesses to help them achieve success quickly.”
MIL launched in 2015 in a 124K SF space in Kendall Square. The company marketed itself as an accelerated commercialization space for life science companies looking to bring their products or pharmaceuticals to market. It has counted CRISPR Therapeutics and Editas Medicine as member companies, and the MIL website says its members have raised over $4B in investment capital.
BioMed Realty announced earlier in December it had signed MIL for the entire 52K SF at 21 Erie St. in Cambridge. But space is dwindling, and prices are surging in the East Cambridge submarket, something Chaudhuri noted at a Bisnow event in October. This has led to lower-cost alternatives to emerge like Boston Landing, which has signed deals with companies like Bose, Proteostasis Therapeutics and Swiss drug manufacturer Roche Diagnostics Operations in the last three months.
“To have New Balance, Bose and now these guys providing these services and helping to accelerate R&D … those endeavors align nicely with what we’re trying to do here,” NB Development Group Managing Director Jim Halliday said. “It puts us at 95% occupancy.”
With the success of 40 and 80 Guest St., the developer expects to roll out a 250K SF building with office and lab-and-tech-ready space in 2018. Halliday said it will be similar in scale to 80 Guest St., which is home to the Boston Bruins Warrior Ice Arena as well as Bose, Roche and Proteostasis. The transit-oriented development’s master plan was initially centered on innovation, but life science accommodations have been added in recent years.
“It’s confirmation we’ve gone beyond that by being able to attract both a Bose and a Roche,” Halliday said. “With what Mass Innovation Labs is rolling out across the city and internationally, we’re expecting it to make a name for itself with future discoveries.”
