This Week’s Boston Deal Sheet

There is a chill being felt through the financial markets, especially surrounding technology and continued speculation about just how deep and prolonged a funding downturn may be.

While all tech sectors have slowed and many firms struggle with venture capital funding, life sciences still appears to be a solid long-term bet many investors are willing to make. A number of recent funds dedicated to biotech firms or lab and related real estate have shown that, despite a first-quarter dip in funding from last year’s record high, there is still quite an appetite for this asset class. 

“We are a long-term fund betting on the long-term growth of this industry for which we've never had more conviction,” Breakthrough Properties co-founder and CEO Dan Belldegrun told Bisnow in an interview.

Breakthrough, a joint venture of Tishman Speyer and Bellco Capital, has raised a $3B fund to directly invest in life sciences real estate across a global portfolio, which it says is the largest fund of its kind in history.

Breakthrough, which launched in 2019, already has 4.6M SF of projects in the pipeline across the U.S. and UK, and it announced Monday its first project in Philadelphia, a 200K SF ground-up development site next to the University of Pennsylvania. Bisnow spoke to Belldegrun about the fund’s approach…

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Peebles Corp. CEO Don Peebles sat down with Bisnow to talk about his vision for Affirmation Tower, his plan to develop the first supertall in New York City largely built by women and minorities.

The project, which is slated for a state-owned lot across from the Jacob Javits Convention Center on Manhattan's West Side, is a long-held dream for Peebles. His team’s current plan is to build a nearly 2M SF building with hotel, office and retail and could be home to the Museum of Civil Rights, a concept championed by the Rev. Al Sharpton, whom Peebles has known for years.

But it is far from a done deal. 

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