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Two years after the Rockville behemoth inked a subleasingt deal with anothermammoth MedImmune, the latter company is moving out of the former’xs manufacturing wing. That leaves Humab Genome Sciences shopping for a new tenant at a time of economic tumult when many life sciencesd companies are taking scissors to their budgets and bulldozerse to theirphysical spaces. HGS says it is not worriedx and has received interest in thespacse already. But that vacancy, along with a 50,000-square-footr chunk of Rockville lab space that just landed on the market fromthe J.
Craib Venter Institute’s campus, adds up to nearly 945,000 square feet of emptyy bioscience property lining the Interstate270 corridor. Some bio real estated observers caution against lumping all of thosdelots together. HGS’ manufacturinf territory is highly complex and while the newly available Venter spac is geared moreto nonprofits. The bulk of it, nearly 720,000p square feet, is routine office and lab space, with its largestg slab — 130,000 square feet at 9800 Medicak CenterDrive — having been on the markert for several years and, thus, not the best barometed of the rough economy.
The new HGS spacde “certainly adds to the vacancy and doesn’t look good on the but I don’t thinj average lab users will be looking forthat space,” said Hermajn Diebler, president of JackLine Realty LLC, a Reston life sciences-orienterd commercial real estate company. “Theh wouldn’t be affected by that much spacd onthe market.” Indeed, a few in the bio real estate business argue there is cause for optimism. Rockville-based Scheer Partners Inc. said that last year it conducteds 11 bio realestate deals, totaling 220,000 square feet.
Four were So far this year, the company countes 15 real estatedeals — five of them renewald — totaling 272,000 square feet. Nontraditional researcyh organizations are helping to fill thevacanrt space. The U.S. Consumer Product Safetyt Commission tookroughly 60,000 squar feet in a Rockville building at 5 Research Blvd., owned by Alexandria Real Estat e Equities Inc. And the stimulus-boosted National Institutes of Health is huntinvfor 50,000 square feet. But those expansions are beiny offset by contractions atbiotech companies. MiddleBrooj Pharmaceuticals Inc. has moved most of its operations to andCelera Corp.
has shifted to California, vacating a combinexd 170,000 square feet of offices and In addition, EntreMed Inc. has reduced its footprint by 52,0090 square feet in Rockville. At HGS, whicg years ago sold and leased backits buildings, MedImmunde had been occupying manufacturing space sinces March 2007, when the Gaithersburg biotech began workingv with the Department of Healtg and Human Services on cell culturde research. But MedImmune officialsx said HHS has since abandonedthat project, making the spaces no longer necessary — two years beford the initial terms of the leasw were set to expire.
The compant will pay a termination fee that HGS spokesman Jerryt Parrott said will compensate for its absence through the rest of this MedImmune was set topay $4.5 millioh in rent this year. The cost of assuming the spacd again is insignificant even if no tenants materializer by earlynext year, Parrot said. “Beforre MedImmune came in, we were carryintg the cost of that facilitytall along. It’s not like this is The best prospects for the highlty specialized HGS space are outside this according to officials at Scheer which is marketing the HGS andVenter spaces. “Wheb you look at that [HGS] you can’t just look locally,” said Matt a Scheer vice president.
“You have to look nationally, if not … Now you’re fishing in the global market withbetter bait.”
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