WBDC biotech campus delayed

Grant Welker A row of four cottages between AbbVie and the Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital would be demolished to make way for a new biotechnology building.

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By Grant Welker

Three decades after the first biotechnology office building opened off Plantation Street in Worcester, a sixth one in the cluster is close to becoming reality.

A 100,000-square-foot building would rise where four dilapidated unused cottages stand behind offices for pharmaceutical company AbbVie, adding to a stretch of the city including UMass Medical School, the university hospital campus and a series of medical office buildings owned by the school.

This year hasn't gone exactly as planned for the planned building, though.

In January, Gov. Charlie Baker authorized a state agency to sell 44 acres of land to the Worcester Business Development Corp., which plans to develop the site. But LakePharma, a California biologics company expected to be the first tenant, is no longer lined up for the building, disappointing officials who tried luring the company in part through tax incentives.

The land disposition agreement between the state and WBDC enabling the project was expected for completion in June, but is now slated for August, said Roberta Brien, WBDC vice president of projects.

No tenant, no building

Construction won't start without a major tenant in place, so LakePharma's absence means the building will have to wait.

“Progress has been made,” Brien said. “It's just taken some time.”

LakePharma bought Blue Sky BioServices, based at Worcester's Gateway Park, last year and had expressed interest in expanding its area operations at the planned building, although never formally agreed to it.

The Silicon Valley-based company didn't return several messages seeking comment and its Blue Sky offices, since rebranded as LakePharma, said no one at the site could comment.

“They are looking at other sites,” Brien said. “We have not heard anything formally from them.”

The Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance, the state agency in charge of selling the land, would only say it continues to work with the WBDC on a sale agreement. The corporation was named developer of the project last September by the state.

Adding to the research park

Once WBDC gets the property, among the first steps will be demolishing four cottages between AbbVie and the Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital. The Worcester Historical Commission approved demolition in February.

The planned office building would be the first of several. The 44 acres includes enough room for 500,000 square feet of office space in up to five buildings, Brien said. The site includes the Hale Building, a stone-facade building that's long been vacant; the Bryan Building, which is part of the former Worcester State Hospital; and the UMass Community Healthlink building. Plans aren't in place yet for those buildings.

The old Worcester State Hospital was largely destroyed by a fire in 1991, and the rest of the building was demolished in 2008. The Worcester Recovery Center and Hospital opened in 2012 on roughly the same footprint.

The WBDC plans will add to six similar buildings that make up the separate UMass Medicine Science Park just down Plantation Street, which first opened in 1986. The complex, sometimes still called the Massachusetts Biotechnology Research Park, has been updated with $4.5 million in improvements, paid by both UMass and tenants, said Mark Shelton, the medical school's associate vice chancellor for communications.

The five buildings in the UMass Medicine Science Park have a combined 250,000 square feet leased. UMass runs the Brudnick Neuropsychiatric Research Institute located adjacent to the Bryan Building.

UMass is very bullish on the future of biotechnology research and development in Worcester, Shelton said.

“This region is a great place for biomedical R&D,” he said.