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King Street Properties, a Boston life sciences developer, has bought three sites on Jackson Road in Devens for development plans.
November 24, 2020
Boston developer moving forward on $500M Devens life science complex
Photo | Courtesy | King Street Properties
A rendering of King Street Properties' planned life sciences complex in Devens
Photo | Courtesy | King Street Properties
A rendering of King Street Properties' planned life sciences complex in Devens
By Grant Welker
King Street Properties, a Boston development firm that bought three Devens sites this year, is planning a $500-million life sciences complex in a major boon to the former military base.
King Street is planning to begin construction nearly next year on the first of five buildings to total 700,000 square feet of space for drug-making operations for pharmaceutical companies, with a hope of landing businesses whose headquarters or research-and-development arms are in places like Boston or Cambridge.
King Street's plans will add to Bristol Myers Squibb's pharmaceutical facility in Devens as the former military base, now largely controlled by the state agency MassDevelopment, works to build itself out as a major business hub in North Central Massachusetts. Steve Lynch, a co-owner of King Street, said Tuesday the firm was attracted to Devens because of an expedited permitting process, available land and utilities and investments made in the site by MassDevelopment.
"For all those reasons, Devens was an easy call for us," he said.
King Street has paid $7.4 million for three properties in Devens: 45 Jackson Road, a 22-acre site with the zoning potential for 350,000 square feet of development space, including for offices, research and development, or light industrial use; 75 Jackson Road, which spans 11 acres and has the potential for 200,000 square feet of similar uses; and 57 Jackson Road, which includes a 22,500-square-foot office building and 6.8 acres for expansion.
King Street, which is building without a tenant lined up first, expects the first building to open in the third quarter of 2021. The site's other buildings will quickly follow, with the firm planning to open a new building about every six months, Lynch said. King Street is in active conversations with multiple potential tenants and has hired the international firm CBRE to be a real estate broker for the project, he said.
The planned $500-million investment includes construction costs and outfitting the buildings with specialized and costly equipment, including bioreactors and clean rooms requiring their own extra air filtration systems – like a building within a building, Lynch said. King Street has found through talking with tenants in places like Cambridge, Lexington and Waltham that what they need most is exactly such a facility: a place where they can manufacture drugs in big, open spaces that can also be easily expanded if needed.
Devens – which spans parts of Ayer, Harvard and Shirley – got its start in 1917 for World War I as New England's largest military base, but closed in 1996, leading to the elimination of 7,000 jobs. At the time, the three towns voted to give the site to MassDevelopment to help turn the site off Route 2 into a commercial and industrial center to eventually include millions of square feet of space.
Photo | Courtesy
Bristol-Myers Squibb's Devens facility
Nearly $200 million in state funds have been spent transforming the old base, including removing hazardous soil and taking down hundreds of barracks. Some still stand in what's known as Vicksburg Square, a cluster of brick buildings at the center of Devens that MassDevelopment is still working to develop.
Other developed parts of the base have largely been used for sprawling industrial or manufacturing uses to take advantage of an area with fast-tracked permitting processes and a general lack of residential abutters to complicate building such facilities in most communities. Notable tenants today include Little Leaf Farms, Bristol Myers Squibb, Quiet Logistics and Nypro.
In all, Devens includes more than 100 businesses and organizations taking up roughly 6 million square feet and employing more than 6,000 people, a workforce that's nearly doubled since 2012. Roughly 500 residents live in 172 housing units.
King Street, which is also involved in remaking the former MetroWest Daily News building in Framingham, is looking largely to the outer fringes of Greater Boston for much of the life sciences growth in the coming years.
"Devens, by the way, is just the start for us," Lynch said.
The company, which calls itself the biggest owner of life sciences space in the state outside Kendall Square, is also expanding outside Massachusetts. It is nearing completion on a 270,000-square-foot life sciences facility in New York City, and is working to convert to similar use a 500,000-square-foot building in North Carolina's Research Triangle.
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