Gateway Picks Developer For Next Phase | Construction on 80,000 sq. ft. building could begin this year
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A rendering of a new building planned for Gateway Park in Worcester.
Gateway Park in Worcester has landed a firm with experience building facilities in life sciences hot spots — like the Longwood Medical Area in Boston and Kendall Square in Cambridge — as the developer for Gateway’s next phase.
Danvers-based Kavanagh Advisory Group has signed a letter of intent with Gateway, which is a partnership between Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the Worcester Business Development Corp., and intends to break ground on the development before the end of the year.
John Kavanagh, the firm’s founder, said he was attracted by the fully-prepared and permitted site at Gateway, and by the opportunity to attract high-profile tenants to Worcester from Cambridge and Boston.
“For bioscience and research, having Worcester be a hub outside of Cambridge and Boston makes an awful lot of sense,” Kavanagh said. “The cost of being in Cambridge and Boston is an awful lot higher, and companies there are going to want a significant part of their operations to be in Worcester.”
Kavanagh is getting financing in order and recruiting tenants for the building, which is being planned as an 80,000-square-foot “wet lab” facility.
According to Jeff Solomon, WPI executive vice president and CFO, the building’s most likely location is on the currently vacant lot closest to the existing 125,000-square-foot, $50 million WPI Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center just off Prescott St. The center opened in 2007 and is fully occupied by a mix of academic and commercial tenants, including Mass-achusetts Biomedical Initiatives, which houses start-up companies, Blue Sky Biotech, CellThera, which is conducting tissue regeneration research for the U.S. Department of Defense and RXi Pharmaceuticals, the RNAi-based drug firm founded by UMass Medical School professor and Nobel Prize winner Craig Mello.
Solomon said Kavanagh quickly rose to the top of the list of developers suitable for the Gateway job.
“Kavanagh was introduced to Gateway by the WBDC. We had been looking at a number of developers and felt that Kavanagh had the right mix of knowhow and resources. The economy is making all development very challenging right now. Kavanagh brings the resources to get this done,” Solomon said.
The lab facility Kavanagh will help build is the first of about four more that WPI and the WBDC want to develop at Gateway. Plans also call for market-rate and student housing, as well as retail development at the park.
Long And Winding Road
Kavanagh is a development and management company that focuses on large projects in New England for colleges and universities, medical research and health care and corporate headquarters.
David Forsberg, the WBDC’s president, said Gateway “worked long and hard to find the right developer to take Gateway to the next level, and it’s been a long and winding road. It’s a tough time. The economy has made everything slower and harder, but Gateway is a unique initiative.”
Ultimately, though, the decision to select Kavanagh, and any developer working at Gateway, rests with WPI.
WPI spokesman Michael Cohen said Kavanagh’s Gateway project is expected to employ about 120 people in construction and about 400 permanent employees when fully occupied.
The firm has done work for the University of Massachusetts, including the UMass.
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