Spotlight 4: Growing The Life Sciences
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GETTING BIGGER: Gateway Park's next building, shown above, is expected to break ground in April.
The Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s goal to have its researchers working in close proximity to life sciences and biotech companies is set to take another big step this year.
The second of five planned life sciences buildings at WPI’s Gateway Park will be under construction in April, WPI announced this month.
A Holyoke builder, The O’Connell Cos. Inc., will lease property from WPI to finance, construct and own a $30-million, four-story building at 50 Prescott St. The 92,000-square-foot building is expected to house about 140 employees and would be the second major building in the 12-acre park.
State Support
Tenants already secured for the new building include Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives and Blue Sky Biotech. Those two companies will outfit their lab space with help from a $5.2-million grant from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center.
WPI will also house its biomanufacturing education and training center, an expanded fire protection engineering department and research laboratory and the graduate division of the school of business in the new building. The school has invested $65 million in the Gateway Park project to date.
The new building will be a neighbor for the 125,000-square-foot life sciences and bioengineering center, which opened in 2007. The $50-million center is comprised of two buildings connected by a courtyard.
To ensure the capacity for more development for the park, WPI spent $12.5 million on a 660-space parking garage, which also opened in 2007.
State and federal funds for the project have totaled approximately $15 million.
WPI aims to have five life sciences buildings in Gateway Park, totaling 500,000 square feet of lab space for research organizations, as well as 241,000 square feet of loft condominiums and several retail establishments.
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