PMB, Montgomery Street Plan $280M Life Science Park Near Denver

Coal Creek Innovation Park. Image courtesy of PMB

The $280 million Coal Creek Innovation Park, the first speculative purpose-built life science project in Boulder County, Colo., will be built in downtown Superior, Colo., following local approval this week of the 365,000-square-foot development.

PMB, a national health-care real estate developer, and commercial real estate investment firm Montgomery Street Partners expect to break ground in the second quarter of 2023 and complete development in the third quarter of 2024.

Phase one will include an owner-furnished, 27,000-square-foot spec suite space to enable quick occupancy for growing companies in need of high-quality lab space. Other plans call for three office and lab buildings ranging in size from 85,000 square feet to 150,000 square feet and a fourth building with ground-floor retail and structured parking at the site.

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The buildings will have efficient floorplates, 16-foot floor-to-floor heights and flexible infrastructure to accommodate a variety of office, lab and R&D uses. Shared lab services will be available to all tenants, including RODI water, dedicated laboratory water, compressed air, glass wash and a lab waste system.

Coal Creek Innovation Park will be 10 minutes from Boulder and 25 minutes from Denver. The RTD’s Flatiron Flyer rapid transit bus service and US 36 Bike Trail provide multi-modal transportation options between Boulder and Denver. It is one of the last infill sites in Boulder County south of Boulder, with visibility from the U.S. 36 highway and one of the last available commercial sites in downtown Superior.

CBRE has been hired to market the life science development. Perkins & Will will handle architecture and design. Other team members include Affiliated Engineers Inc. to provide MEP engineering and BNBuilders to provide preconstruction services.

Tight life science market

Ben Rosenfeld, senior vice president of development at PMB, said in a prepared statement there is significant unmet need for institutional-quality space in Boulder County. He noted the existing inventory largely consists of assets of less than 60,000 square feet that are converted single-story flex properties and offer limited expansion opportunities for high-growth and more mature life science companies. In addition to providing nearly 400,000 square feet of R&D specified lab space, Rosenfeld said the project will also offer a generous tenant improvement allowance and up to 50,000 square feet of speculative lab space.

Erik Abrahamson, senior vice president, CBRE, said in prepared remarks life science companies are looking to locate and expand their operations in the Boulder/Denver area. While they are attracted to the region’s highly educated and skilled workforce and ecosystem of educational and research institutions, Abrahamson said it has been difficult to find available lab space in Boulder County.

Vacancy at Boulder life science properties was just 0.3 percent at the end of the second quarter, according to CBRE research. On the demand side, the market has maintained more than 1 million square feet of active life science tenant requirements for nearly two years. Earlier this year, CBRE conducted an analysis of top U.S. markets for life science talent and the Denver/Boulder region was named the 11th best market overall with the number of life science researchers increasing 20 percent from 2015 to 2020.

The Newmark 2022 Mid-Year Life Science Overview & Market Clusters report notes the market is transitioning from mostly as-is deals to investors funding lab-ready spaces and speculative developments to meet the demand in the market. Newmark estimates the size of the Denver/Boulder life science market at 3.5 million square feet but states real estate investment volume year-to-date has already outpaced 2021’s total of $491 million. The report noted that limited large blocks have led some firms to relocate along the U.S. 36 corridor.

There are big players already active in the Boulder area. A joint venture of Tishman Speyer and Bellco Capital known as Breakthrough Properties acquired a four-building asset in Boulder last month, with the intention of creating a 9-acre campus featuring office, lab and flex space. Breakthrough Properties raised $3 billion in capital and co-investments for a fund to scale life science companies.

In April, BioMed Realty, a Blackstone-owned company, acquired Flatiron Park, a 1 million-square-foot, 22-building life science and office campus in Boulder for just over $600 million from a joint venture of Crescent Real Estate, Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s Real Estate Business and Lionstone Investments. The campus is about 90 percent leased to a mix of life science and technology firms.