August 22, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
NEW YORK – More startup biotech space is coming to New York City.
A new facility, The New York Life Sciences and Biotechnology Center, is being planned for Manhattan. When construction is finished, the new site will offer 1.35 million square feet of “state of the art” space for life science companies. The building will include flexible wet and dry laboratory space as well as build to suit Class A offices, according to a website dedicated to the facility.
Construction on the new facility is expected to begin in 2018, Paul Wexler, a life science real estate broker told Xconomy. Wexler told Xconomy that the project will be New York’s “most exciting life sciences and biotech project.”
Designs for the site have not yet been finalized. The property selected for the life science center has been vacant for many years. It was formerly a power plant, Xconomy said. Over the years, there have been plans to use the waterfront property for several projects, including residential buildings.
The New York Life Sciences and Biotechnology Center is the latest facility in the Big Apple dedicated to biotech and life science companies. Earlier this year, Alexandria Real Estate Equities opened the new Alexandria LaunchLabs at the Alexandria Center for Life Science. The LaunchLabs site is a full-service startup platform designed to satisfy key unmet needs for plug-and-play space and strategic risk capital for seed- and early-stage life science companies in New York City.
The LaunchLabs isn’t the only site in New York City to spring up or be proposed as space for biotechs. Earlier this month, two real estate companies announced plans to invest up to $20 million into a life sciences development in Manhattan. The facility, called the Hudson Research Center, would provide about 150,000 square feet of new wet lab space in New York, Xconomy reported.
Several other biotech incubators are also expected to open in New York City soon, Xconomy said, including BioLabs@NYULangone and JLabs, which will open at the New York Genome Center in 2018.
While the new biotech facilities seem to be springing up in New York are addressing a need for space in the city, Xconomy noted there is another concern for young companies – a lack of affordable living space. Average rent for an apartment in New York City is $3,137, according to the website Rent Jungle. One bedroom apartments in New York rent for $2,746 a month on average and two bedroom apartment rents average $3,471.
