When Joel Marcus, a trained accountant and biotech industry lawyer, started lab real estate giant Alexandria Real Estate Equities in the 1990s, the sure bet many see in biotech wasn’t visible to many. The company’s first leases in San Francisco charged lab tenants just $6 per SF. Now, the REIT's average tenant pays just shy of $70. Alexandria has, through a strategy of building campuses and research clusters and rapidly expanding in a handful of key markets, become perhaps the most influential player in a booming market that only accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. The company just came off its most successful quarter in history, having more than doubled its revenue and total square footage under ownership or development in less than five years. Marcus spoke with Bisnow this week about the right way to evaluate conversions and biotech cities on the rise, the changing life sciences campus and avoiding the pretenders trying to enter one of the most desirable asset classes in commercial real estate. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. 
Bisnow: You've spoken about office conversions earlier during earnings calls and called them inferior to Class-A campus-type space. At the same time, Alexandria has engaged in some conversions itself. Considering the space crunch the industry faces over the next 24 months, do you still feel like conversions are second-class spaces, and…  Read the full story here. | 
