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Owner of South End office building wants to convert it to life-science labs

Rendering of new building

Rendering shows the building looking pretty much the same as now, but with a modified "penthouse" at the roofline.

A California real-estate firm that built an eight-floor life-sciences building atop a parking garage at Harrison Avenue and Herald Street in the South End says it now want to convert the existing "aging" office building next door into a similar life-sciences building.

BioMed Realty of San Diego, which specializes in life-sciences buildings, bought 321 Harrison Ave. and 1000 Washington St. for $314 million in April, 2021. In a "notice of product change" filed with the BPDA last week, It says it would convert the 11-story, 235,000-square-foot 1000 Washington St. from traditional offices to new life-sciences labs and related office space, updating the "early 20th century 11-story office building extensively modified in the early 1980s." The two buildings share a lobby.

Also last week, a local developer filed plans for a two-building life-sciences complex at 1033 Washington St., kitty corner from BioMed's buildings.

From the outside, the main noticeable change to 1000 Washington St. would be a larger roof "penthouse" for the bigger HVAC and mechanical systems, as well as new, more efficient windows on all floors, to go with the less noticeable interior work, such as new ventilation systems and better supports for floors and a new foundation. BioMed says it will add widened sidewalks and some new trees along Harrison Avenue and Mullins Way.

BioMed says the new use will mean less of a traffic load on the area, in part because labs usually require fewer workers than offices. But labs require more energy than offices, so BioMed says it would work with National Grid and Eversource to install a new natural-gas main and beefier connections to the electrical grid.

As with a growing number of R&D projects in Boston Proper and nearby areas, the building would be in close proximity not just to other life-sciences buildings but to to residential buildings as well, in this case, the Ink Block complex across Harrison Avenue and the even newer 345 Harrison Ave. across Mullins Way.

The company says R&D uses would be mostly limited to Level 1 and 2 work, which would involved "moderate-risk infectious agents or toxins that pose a risk if accidentally inhaled, swallowed, or exposed to the skin" and which would require equipment to decontaminate laboratory waste.

However, under an agreement with the BPDA, prospective tenants of either of the buildings could apply to do Level 3 biosafety work, which would involve "infectious agents or toxins that may be transmitted through the air and cause potentially lethal infection through inhalation exposure" and would require greater protective facilities, including negative air flow - where the pressure inside lab space would be lower than the surrounding building, to minimize any organisms floating out. A tenant that wanted to do this sort of work would have to notify the BPDA and hold community meetings in both the South End and Chinatown and then win a positive vote from the BPDA board.

Level 4 research, of the sort done at the BU biolab on Albany Street, involving the world's deadliest microorganisms, would be forbidden.

BioMed says it hopes to begin 18 months of renovation work on the building in the spring of 2025.

1000 Washington St. filings and meeting schedule.
321 Harrison Ave. filings (includes details of what can be done on the nearly 2-acre site the two buildings sit on).

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Comments

Life sciences are booming now.

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I don't really blame Biogen for being the first super spreader. We shouldn't have expected Life Sciences to stay constrained to Kendell Sq but hindsight is 20/20.

All it took was one mid-manager to come from a Life Science conference in Europe to quickly spread it to other regional managers and ultimately their R&D departments.

Before BPDA understood the extent of the spread they had dozens of applications to review. Most of us were still under the impression it was just a bad housing crisis, not the start of something much worse.

The city tried to slow the spread with community hearings and shadow studies but, let's be honest, at that point it was already too late.

Now three years later it's endemic. The Life Sciences aren't going away. We need to learn how to manage the risk. High risk plots should be kept isolated in Historic Districts. Everyone has to avoid discussion of negative pressure HVAC systems and stock options while on the public transit.

But I have faith in Boston. We survived the Olympics scare and we'll survive this.

(The above text is sarcasm.)

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Remember when every TV show was a cop show? When every show was a sitcom? It's like that. Because they see a wave of life-science developments, they think it must be a great idea, or the only idea.

Also,

But labs require more energy than offices, so BioMed says it would work with National Grid and Eversource to install a new natural-gas main and beefier connections to the electrical grid.

Maybe they could cover the roofs with solar panels? Like I said, no imagination.

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My sarcasmdar is busted, but if you're blaming Biogen for spreading life sciences across the river, bro, just no. You'd be better off looking at Tom Menino and Vertex in what used to be the wasteland we now know as the Seaport. Or even earlier, the company (offhand, can't remember the name) for which the city shipped English High School off to JP from the Longwood Medical Area. Or the craftily hidden giant tanks of Korean hamster ovary cells that now secrete some life-saving enzymes next to the Allston/Cambridge turnpike exit (my favorite life-sciences building in all the land) .

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I'll add the /s

The Biogen reference was in regards to the famous conference they held right around this time 3 years ago. It accelerated the spread of a different sort of Life Science.

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It seems that labs, which provide places to do research and all are cropping up all over the place, but there are still so many people in need of permanent housing that more affordable housing for those who need it should also be constructed, as well.

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Need luxury housing. Building these labs will fill the glut of empty luxury apartments.

/s, but unfortunately it’s probably true

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avocado green and harvest gold of 2020s commercial real estate.

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This has gone from being a tax boom and redevelopment boon for the city to what probably a net negative. This just eats away at much beededbreaidential space. We aren’t able to produce housing to meet demand if they keep bringing in room for life sciences jobs.

The affordability or lack thereof then zaps the issue or service workers and recreational space. Probably hard to stop now. But this has gotten out of hand IMO.

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It's apparently been some sort of commercial structure since like 1914. It was never going to be residential. And it's not like the area around it hasn't seen a fair amount of residential development over the past decade.

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That type of site by site thinking is why we’re in this predicament now.

I’m talking about the whole city, honest to goodness it is disturbing that HS never in mind in these comments and it’s always “the site” and the site alone

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Yeah I dont like life sciences generally but let this guy do his thing with this. That building is next door is a huge residential building and ink block is across the street. And there's another one going up next to cmart (and eventually over cmart). There's an OK amount of residential nearby that this going to lab space wouldn't be terrible.

but yeah this building is very 80s, I wonder what it looked like prior to being 80s-fied. It probably needs a gut job, and converting it to lab will do that. Cuz you'll need the gut job for a) the whole vent thing lab space needs and b) b/c it'll be a hard lease for an older building if its not all new (vs all the new lab space in buildings elsewhere)

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Very 70s. Last time I was inside it was covered with orange carpet. Pretty awesome if you ask me. Under that cladding is a brick building and I was told it used to be a pen factory. At some point I had a picture of it from Washington, pre renovation, with the Orange line rumbling by in the foreground.

(Update: there's a pic right on the Dover Station Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_station_(MBTA)#/media/File%3AMBTA_Main_Line_El_at_Dover_Station_in_1967.jpg)

Nick DeWolfe and Alex DArbelloff, founders of Teradyne, used this spot as their global headquarters for many years. They believed in the city back in the 1970s and 80s, when most companies and skilled workers would scoff at the idea of setting up camp in dirty old Boston. Then they died, others took over, company drastically shrank, then departed for North Reading. Teradyne is now a remnant of the golden era of tech in the Boston area. I suppose they are lucky to exist.

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The minute you said Teredyne I was like.. "OH"

Because I remember when it did say Teredyne on the building. And yeah thought it was pretty 70s back then too (in the late 90s).

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What do life science labs do? We have so many.

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I had been thinking, "Do the developers really think there is *that* much demand for life-sciences lab space?" But maybe that's not it at all: Maybe they're competing for tenants, and know that like 70% of the buildings will have to be repurposed for other uses—and they're gambling that that will be someone else's buildings.

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I think the term would be flight to quality. People involved (developers/banks) are probably acting on some data that x% of life science tenants are not satisfied with their current building and will move to an updated space if it’s available.

We will probably see this with commercial space as well. The new Winthrop tower, south station tower and seaport spaces will increase vacancy in class B offices as companies hermit crab up a level of quality. Therefore the next shoe to drop will be when vacancy in those class B spaces rachets up another level higher. This is where we might see some residential conversions/whole tear downs.

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The next question would be, why now? Presumably the existing spaces haven't gotten suddenly worse. But maybe they would now have the increased funding to move to a better space.

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Increased supply means lower prices; if you can get a newer, nicer building for the same price you're paying, why not move.

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I've been asking this for a few years now. I want to see the 'necessity' of needing to build so much.

So I've been asking for a whiule. I remember I would get shot down quite a bit.. now people are like "yeahhh this may be too much". I thought so a few years ago!

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Is the current lab space fully rented?

I'd like to see some statics.

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Boston ended 2022 at 3.2% vacancy for lab space. If we expect continued research industry growth, then that doesn't seem too high.

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Bingo. There was an interesting article on Commonwealth about the Office Building vacancy issue related to this - vacancy in traditional office buildings is overall very high, but if you break it down more granularly, there's a weird pattern - brand new, high-amenity, "high end" office buildings are actually doing great. They're signing leases before they're even finished. It's lower end, older, etc office buildings that are struggling and can't get anybody in there.

I suspect most these life science guys are expecting that market trend to continue, possibly with a bit higher occupancy overall due to in-person requirements for labwork. So they're betting that since they can't fill their dank 70s era office building, their brand new 2023 high amenity life sciences building will capture some of that top of the market demand.

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Life sciences should also include meth labs, amirite?

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when they built the Whole Foods store with minimal parking? The reasoning was that the store was within walking distance of the Red and Orange lines.
Today the parking lot is always full, the line of cars to enter goes halfway down the block, they have 3 employees assisting/ valet for spots and they let gasoline powered vehicles park in the electric vehicle charging stations.

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