Life science companies have particular needs when it comes to office and laboratory space, and developers have started to build inventory in the Conejo Valley.Pasadena company Alexandria Real Estate Equities has jumped at the chance to enter the market, partnering with venture capital fund Westlake Village BioPartners to build wet lab space for the firm’s portfolio companies.The life science facility developer plans to build out a 130,000-square-foot, three-building campus at 1280-1290 and 1300 Rancho Conejo Blvd. in Thousand Oaks. Patrick DuRoss, senior managing director at the Calabasas office of commercial real estate brokerage Newmark brokered the sale to Alexandria.So far, Alexandria has finished 30,000 square feet of space, the VC firm said. Alexandria declined to comment for this story.Also, HATCHspaces has been catering to the Conejo biotech market since 2018, converting office space at 1525 and 1535 Rancho Conejo Blvd. into certified lab space, and more recently purchasing a former Amgen facility at 2495 Teller Road in December.“We built out the labs for Instill Bio, our tenant at the Hatch Campus facility in Thousand Oaks in a six-week window of time, which is a pretty fast build out for any type of space, but extraordinarily fast when it comes to a life science spinout or an improvement project,” said Allan Glass, managing partner of HATCHspaces. HATCH has been working with Chicago-based Singerman Real Estate through a joint venture for property development.Added Glass: “Most of these companies don’t have the luxury of waiting around for lab space to present itself to market. … They typically can’t make those decisions or commit to space until they get around to funding close. Once they do, they need to be in the lab yesterday.”Turnkey lease optionsIt takes on average 10 to 12 months to build out space suitable for a life science tenant, the developer said – typically 70 percent wet lab and 30 percent regular office space.Having “second generation” space, as Glass called it, ready-to-go turnkey property like its recent Amgen purchase, is essential to growing a biotech cluster.“As some of these leases roll over … then opportunities for tenants broadens,” explained Glass. “That adds to the infrastructure that helps build a cluster. Without a base of usable space or purpose-built space for the life sciences, then what’s happened in the past, and will continue to happen most likely in Los Angeles, is these companies faced without an option here will be forced to relocate to somewhere like San Francisco or San Diego.”Glass noted that L.A. isn’t just a “fly over zone” between San Diego and San Francisco anymore — it’s on the biotech radar thanks to big players like Alexandria and Westlake BioPartners taking an interest in the area. That also means demand for space has increased during the past several years, he said.“That’s a function of two things: COVID and new requirements for therapies around COVID-related uses, and secondly an increase in funding from venture capital and private equity into the life science markets, which is creating demand for more space from the existing companies that are here,” said Glass.COVID has not changed the way life science spaces are built, added Glass, since certification requirements for wet lab space are already set to a high standard.“Wet lab space is uniquely positioned or built to be adaptable to a COVID world,” added Glass. “At least in our spaces, wet labs have their own ventilation system. You’re not recirculating air among several companies. The cleanliness standards for a lot of these labs are a lot higher than what you’d typically see in an office.” – Amy Stulick
