Richards Barry Joyce: Lab Market Fills 647,000 SF

BOSTON — Anyone perusing Richard Barry Joyce & Partners’ new bioSTATus should heed one caution regarding the survey of Cambridge laboratory buildings: vacancies are not as gross as they might appear. “For the average tenant, it seems a lot tighter” than the 13.1 percent tallied in the review of 8.2 million sf, RBJ Director of Research Brendan Carroll accedes in releasing the current overview to The Real Reporter.

The data is accurate, stresses Carroll, but availabilities that inflated the figure are concentrated in a handful of large blocks around Kendall Square, product that rank-and-file life sciences startups or even a midrange company would rarely encounter because the developers are holding out to land bigger fish, explains Carroll.

For the bulk of firms who need between 10,000 and 20,000 sf, “you’d be surprised how few good options there really are,” relays Carroll, adding indications are for continued depletion of the mainstream inventory after a “robust” 12-month stretch that posted 358,000 sf of net positive absorption, including 257,000 sf over the past two quarters. Even the pending departure of Vertex

Pharmaceuticals to Boston’s Seaport District should provide scant relief, maintains Carroll. “That will be very soughtafter,” he says of 650,000 sf being left behind. One concept that the Seaport could attract a cluster of life sciences companies, raiding East Cambridge and Boston’s Longwood Medical Area, “remains to be seen,” says Carroll. Having a Cambridge address still carries cache, he surmises, as does being affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

One thing resonating in the bioSTATus review: laboratory space is even less prevalent outside Kendall Square, with only a 1.3 percent vacancy for 3.0 million sf in Boston and a 10.5 percent mark for 4.9 million sf tracked in suburban venues. There has been an impressive 647,000 sf of positive net absorption in the past 12 months for 16.3 million sf of supply, bioSTATus reports, dropping the overall vacancy rate to 10.1 percent, putting the region on the cusp of single digits.

Speculative construction has been slow to respond to the solid fundamentals, according to Carroll. “It’s only going to get tighter,” he says. “The market is very robust right now, and is growing, and we are expecting that will continue.” Any safety