IQHQ Acquires Metro Boston Life Science Campus
The REIT expanded its presence in the area with the $35.9 million purchase of Innovation Park in Andover, Mass.
Innovation Park. Image courtesy of IQHQ Inc.
Life sciences real estate developer IQHQ Inc. has acquired Innovation Park, an approximately 200,000-square-foot campus on the 495 Corridor in Andover, Mass., from Eisai Inc. The property changed hands for $35.9 million, according to Yardi Matrix. Colliers International represented IQHQ in the deal.
The sale of the property, located at 4 Corporate Drive, closed in March, according to an IQHQ spokesperson, but has only been formally announced now. In the interim, IQHQ was able to nail down two long-term leases at the park, to UMass Lowell and Ora Inc. With offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Japan, Ora is an ophthalmic contract research organization and product development firm.
Innovation Park was completed 30 years ago and was updated and expanded in 2006, the IQHQ spokesperson told Commercial Property Executive. The company plans to update the campus again, with a café featuring indoor and outdoor seating, a fitness center also with both indoor and outdoor workout areas, and common area improvements. TRIA Architects has been retained to redesign the property.
Aggressive growth
Innovation Park complements IQHQ’s other Boston-area assets, including 109 Brookline Avenue, a 285,000-square-foot lab and office building near the Longwood Medical Area, which IQHQ bought from Equity Commonwealth in February.
In addition, the REIT is underway on its Fenway Center project, which will include lab, office and ground-level retail space, in a 21-story building and a 10-story building, both on a podium at 822 Beacon St. All this activity follows IQHQ’s completion of a $770 million capital raise earlier this year.
The Boston area’s life sciences/lab market is one of the few in the United States “that is building aggressively enough to placate demand,” according to a 2020 forecast from Cushman & Wakefield. Their outlook indicates that metro Boston’s life sciences space inventory could grow by 55 percent, to 32 million square feet, by 2024.
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