The world’s largest warehouse landlord is set to build £450 million worth of new laboratory space in Cambridge, buying into the UK’s ever-growing life sciences sector.
San Francisco firm Prologis has bought out Countryside Properties in their joint venture delivering Cambridge Biomedical Campus, to take full control of phase two of development, expanding the campus.
The campus is currently Europe’s largest centre of medical research and is home to AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, as well as Addenbrooke’s Hospital.
Prologis plan an expansion on 400,000 sq ft of office and laboratory space, with phase one of the expansion entailing 100,000 sq ft of space split across five storeys, costing £65 million.
The facility is designed to host primarily small life science businesses, providing ready-made labs to work from, with the building being designed speculatively, with no tenant take up to date.
Prologis’s chief executive and chairman, Hamid Moghadam, said “A lot of innovation was [historically] done by Big Pharma companies, but now a lot of the scientists that are hanging around the major universities are taking advantage of venture capital that has become available. All of a sudden it is changing from a big company activity to a very entrepreneurial activity and innovation happens much faster in smaller settings.”
Andrew Blevins, UK head of life sciences for Prologis, said the space is “going to be pitching to that much more granular business community, such as start-ups. It’s not just the domain of the Super Pharmas anymore.”
It is expected that the construction of the expansion will start in early 2022 and finish in the summer of 2023.
Image source- Prologis
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