BioMed Realty said today it will undertake a £35 million (about $45 million) expansion at the Babraham Research Campus in Cambridge, UK, that will nearly double its existing space for early-stage and growing biomedical users.
The expansion will entail the construction of two new buildings totaling 108,000 square feet. The new buildings will consist of integrated laboratory and office facilities for life science companies that require expansion space and want to be within the environment and community of the campus.
The campus is home to the Babraham Institute and the Babraham Bioincubator, consisting of about 115,000 square feet of space occupied by more than 60 early-stage and growing biomedical organizations.
The campus is a freehold estate of the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) that is managed and developed by the Babraham Institute’s commercial arm, Babraham Bioscience Technologies (BBT), on behalf of its shareholders, as well as BBSRC and the institute—which is funded through BBSRC and BBT.
BioMed Realty said the new facilities will be built through a partnership between the company, the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), and BBT. The partnership has signed a long-term lease on approximately 8 acres of BBSRC-owned land at the campus, where the new buildings will rise.
Construction is anticipated to begin by the end of 2017 and be completed in the second quarter of 2019, BioMed Realty said. When completed, the expansion property is expected to be managed by BBT on behalf of BioMed Realty.
“We pledge to assemble the strongest, most knowledgeable team in the industry to deliver exceptional, state-of-the-art research facilities to foster the ground-breaking science happening at the Babraham Research Campus,” BioMed Realty CEO and President Tim Schoen said in a statement.
The expansion at the campus represents an increased presence for BioMed Realty in Cambridge, where the life sciences real estate developer oversees the Granta Park R&D/lab campus in partnership with The Welding Institute (TWI). Since acquiring Granta Park in 2012, BioMed Realty has enlarged the 120-acre site by 250,000 square feet, resulting in a total 330,000 square feet of developed and planned space.
“Over the years, we have had a very good relationship with BioMed Realty at Granta Park, recognizing the potential synergies between the two sites. This is a natural extension of that relationship,” added BBT chief executive Derek Jones. “This inward investment in buildings on the site will support those growing scale-up companies who wish to be part of our campus community but are seeking larger premises than we are currently able to provide.”
BioMed Realty, a Blackstone portfolio company, owns or has interests in properties comprising approximately 12 million rentable square feet.