Alexandria Launches $202M Life Science Campus

Alexandria Center for Advanced Technologies at The Woodlands marks the developer’s first project in Houston. Image courtesy of Alexandria Real Estate Equities

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, the largest life science developer in the country, is opening its first campus in the Houston market with the unveiling of a $201.5 million, 325,000-square-foot multi-tenant development that will be home to the first purpose-built Class A laboratory structure in The Woodlands.

Located on 12 acres at 8800 Technology Forest Place, the first building at Alexandria Center for Advanced Technologies at The Woodlands is a 123,392-square-foot redevelopment project anchored by San Francisco-based Nurix Therapeutics. Nurix, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing drugs to treat cancer and other diseases, is leasing approximately 47,000 square feet in the building.

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Nurix and Alexandria acquired the campus, which then had five buildings across 260,950 square feet, from Lexicon Pharmaceuticals in December 2020. Alexandria later assumed full ownership of the property with Nurix leasing the main, redeveloped building that is now LEED Gold Core & Shell and Fitwell-certified.

Laboratory space at the Alexandria Center for Advanced Technologies at The Woodlands. Image courtesy of Alexandria Real Estate Equities

The campus, designed by Gensler, features move-in ready laboratory space and adjacent nontechnical space, as well as laboratory support services. Amenities include a modern conference and event space, a courtyard and event lawn, wellness and fitness center and pickleball courts. Most of the new construction will be build-to-suit space for life science companies but about 30,000 square feet is expected to be speculative space.

The Houston Business Journal reported Alexandria demolished two existing buildings and gutted two others down to the studs and redeveloped them. Plans call for at least one new building and a four-story parking garage. The site can be expanded.

Houston’s growing life science market

Joel Marcus, executive chairman & founder of Alexandria Real Estate Equities and Alexandria Venture Investments, said in a prepared statement the REIT’s efforts in The Woodlands can be compared to the firm’s entrance into New York City, where commercial life science was very limited before it opened its flagship Alexandria Center for Life Science – NYC in 2020. The campus has since grown to 1.3 million square feet. Marcus said Alexandria is similarly committed to developing a commercial life science presence in The Woodlands, a suburb located about 30 miles north of downtown Houston.

According to Newmark’s newly released Midyear 2023 National Life Science Overview, nearly 1 million square feet of life science space is expected to deliver by the end of 2023 in the Houston market, which currently has about 4.9 million square feet of total inventory. The top three life science owners in the market are Beacon Capital Partners with 700,000 square feet and a 16 percent market share; Texas Medical Center, with 650,000 square feet and a 15 percent market share, and Board of Regents of the Texas A&M University with 572,000 square feet and a 13 percent market share, according to the Newmark report.

Significant life science projects

Construction is underway on TMC Helix Park, previously known as TMC3, which will be part of the Texas Medical Center district and could become the largest life science development in the world. Plans call for the addition of 5 million square feet of life science space across 37 acres, further boosting the metro’s growing position as a major life science cluster. The TMC3 Collaborative Building, the first building being developed by Beacon Capital Partners, is slated to deliver this fall. The 250,000-square-foot building will house research facilities for MD Anderson, Texas A&M University Health Science Center, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and TMC.

A second building, one of two towers that will be part of the 700,000-square-foot Dynamic One property, is also expected to be completed this year. Baylor College of Medicine is leasing 114,000 square feet of lab and office space at the 355,000-square-foot building.

Houston-based Hines is building the 53-acre Levit Green project adjacent to TMC that will also have lab and research facilities.

In March, The Howard Hughes Corp. teamed up with Vitrian to develop cGMP/biomanufacturing facilities within The Woodlands, where firms Cellipont Bioservices, Millipore Sigma, VGXI and KBI Biopharma already have ongoing operations. In August, McCord Development unveiled plans for the construction of BioHub Two, a speculative 45-acre, 500,000-square-foot biomanufacturing campus in northeast Houston.