Keystone Inks New Leases at NJ Science Campus

Middlesex Science Center. Image courtesy of Keystone Property Group

Keystone Property Group has signed three leases—with Infinity BiologiX, LIXIL and Paychex—at its four-building Middlesex Science Center at 30 Knightsbridge Road in Piscataway, N.J.

With these 287,000 square feet of leases, the 685,000-square-foot property is now more than 92 percent occupied.

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The campus provides features considered mission-critical by the life science industry, including high-capacity weight-bearing floors, floor-to-deck heights, robust chiller capacity, fresh air intakes, dual power supply served by an onsite substation, backup emergency power, covered loading docks, freight elevators and venting chases.

The 44.5-acre property offers 40,000 square feet of amenities, including a 240-seat auditorium, 12- and 20-person conference rooms, a fitness center with locker rooms and showers, a cafeteria with to-go and private dining options and a game room. Other amenities include indoor and outdoor seating areas with Wi-Fi, several roof decks and two courtyards.

Its location, at Exit 8 of I-287, is convenient to the New Jersey Turnpike, the Garden State Parkway, several hotels and the NJ Transit bus service. The property is also proximate to Rutgers University, a potential source of highly skilled employees and/or continuing education for employees at the campus.

Infinity BiologiX (IBX) is a leader in biobanking, bioprocessing and analytics, with more than 50 years of biomaterial expertise. The company began with a 30,000-square-foot temporary space and later expanded to a long-term, 200,000-square-foot lease, consolidating its growth at MSC.

New tenant LIXIL is a Tokyo-headquartered manufacturer of building materials and related products, such as bathroom fixtures. Keystone stated the LIXIL was looking for a new headquarters that would both be effective for remote work and offer safe, comfortable office space with a full complement of amenities for collaboration. LIXIL’s 60,000-square-foot lease began earlier this year.

HR services provider Paychex renewed its lease for 30,000 square feet of space in part because its unique operational needs are served by the campus’s infrastructure, according to Keystone.

Healthy market

New Jersey’s inventory of life science space totals 20.4 million square feet, with an estimated 1.2 million square feet of demand, versus only 147,000 square feet under construction, according to a mid-year report from CBRE. Average vacancy is 9.1 percent.

The New Jersey market is one of only a handful nationally to see both an increase in preleasing and a sizable increase in demand since the second quarter of last year. The state also ranks high for rapidly rising rents; net lease rate pricing has jumped by 10 to 15 percent over the past 12 months, CBRE noted.

Last March, PRP LLC paid nearly $340 million for a reported 89 percent share in Keystone’s SORA West mixed-use project in Conshohocken, Pa. From the development’s inception in 2018, a 430,000-square-foot office tower there was slated to be the new headquarters for powerhouse drug wholesaler AmerisourceBergen.