BOSTON – Boston Properties announced that it has agreed to purchase the Shady Grove Bio+Tech Campus in Rockville, Maryland. The property includes seven existing buildings comprising approximately 435,000 square feet across 31 acres in the Shady Grove life sciences cluster, a highly desirable location for leading and emerging companies in the biotechnology sector.
The Company plans to convert the office buildings on the campus to lab to meet current and growing demand in the region from biotechnology companies for new, Class A lab space. The Company expects to begin reconstruction of three of the buildings, which are currently vacant, promptly after closing, which is currently expected to occur in Q3 2021. The Company intends to redevelop or convert the remaining four buildings to lab or life sciences-related uses as each becomes vacant. The gross purchase price for the property is $116.5 million. BXP will own 100% of the campus.
This acquisition builds on BXP’s growing Life Sciences portfolio, which consists of more than 3 million square feet of in-service properties and approximately 1 million square feet of lab development and redevelopment projects that are currently under construction and expected to deliver in the next 36 months. The BXP portfolio also includes approximately 5 million square feet of development opportunities focused on the specific needs of the life sciences sector primarily in Boston, Cambridge, and Waltham/Lexington, Massachusetts, San Francisco, California and now Montgomery County, Maryland.
The Shady Grove Bio+Tech Campus is located in the City of Rockville and is surrounded by the premier cluster for life sciences in Maryland. The campus is situated within a half mile of I-270 with convenient access to MD-355 and other regional arteries. The Montgomery County, Maryland submarket is consistently ranked as one of the top five life sciences clusters in the U.S. and is the epicenter of national public health research and regulatory leadership, hosting the headquarters of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Pharmacopeia, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The area is also supported by several active biotech incubators, both public and private, that accelerate companies and their research. The region is home to more than 400 emerging and established biotechnology and life sciences companies. Top universities in the region, including Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland System, produce STEM graduates at a rate that is on par with the regions surrounding other top biotech innovation clusters in the U.S.
“Suburban Maryland benefits from existing dynamics that provide a strong foundation for growth in the life science industry. Growing demand, combined with limited supply, make Montgomery County, Maryland, and this cluster in particular, an attractive opportunity for BXP to expand its life sciences presence,” said Pete Otteni, SVP, Co-Head of the Washington, DC Region, BXP. “We look forward to using our life sciences expertise and real estate skills to transform the property into a leading life sciences campus in the region.”
“We are thrilled to expand our BXP Life Sciences portfolio with the acquisition of Shady Grove Bio+Tech Campus, furthering our ability to create great space and place for scientific discovery,” said David Provost, Co-Head of BXP Life Sciences.
The property’s seller, Lantian Development, was represented by Tommy Cleaver, Dan Grimes, and Stuart Kenny of CBRE.
