New York City sees spike in life science sector leasing

After years of investment, New York City is set to experience a major spike in the life sciences sector, according to new market reports. Life science industry players in New York City have already began making moves. Alexandria Real Estate Equities, one of the industry’s largest property owners, is working on a 550,000 s/f addition to its life science campus in Manhattan and the Long Island City Partnership have been pushing for a cluster in the popular Queens neighborhood, especially after Amazon pulled out of its HQ2 plans. More recently, Hibercell, a new biotech company that focuses on cancer relapse, signed a 15,000 s/f lease atThe Hudson Research Center at 619 West 54th Street, that’s owned by Taconic Investment Partners and Silverstein Properties. According to CBRE’s NYC Life Sciences Report for 2018’s fourth quarter, the life sciences leasing activity shot up to 57,000 s/f in 2018 compared to the roughly 40,000 s/f the previous year. Currently, Manhattan has more than 1.6 million s/f of life science inventory with 112,000 s/f of available space with an average $80 psf price tag. And CBRE expects the city to double its inventory of lab space in the next two years.