Thor Equities Launches Life Sciences Platform

The Center of Excellence

Thor Equities is the latest real estate company to take a leap into the life sciences sector. The New York City-based commercial real estate firm announced the launch of Thor Sciences, a division of the company that will specialize in the rapidly growing life sciences sector.

Thor kicked off the platform launch with the $152 million acquisition of The Center of Excellence, a 784,000-square-foot life sciences campus in Bridgewater, N.J. The seller was Advance Realty, which purchased the property in 2013 for $45 million, according to Yardi Matrix data.

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The life sciences campus was built in four phases between 1969 and 2004 and is spread across 48 acres in Somerset County. The Center of Excellence houses lab, research and development and office buildings, with tenants that specialize in pharmaceuticals and health services. Anchor tenants at the campus include Nestle Health Science, Ashland and Amneal Pharmaceuticals, with additional tenants including Insmed, Avantor, Nevakar, Solaris Pharma, Clinical Genomics and Matinas BioPharma. Thor plans to spend “tens of millions of dollars” to expand the current campus, the company said in its announcement.

It isn’t Thor’s first foray into the sector. Last year, the company bought two life sciences properties in California and Massachusetts. In March 2018, Thor acquired a 48,000-square-foot office park in Berkeley, Calif., for $17.5 million, while in September of the same year, the company paid $23.5 million for a 92,000-square-foot medical property in the Boston area.

Thor’s platform launch followed a similar move by Tishman Speyer last month, as well as yesterday’s news that Bain Capital Real Estate sold a life science portfolio in North Carolina’s Research Triangle for $405 million.