Oxford Properties Group has completed the purchase of 92 Crowley Drive for $125 million. The 120,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art asset is in the life sciences submarket of Marlborough, Mass., and is near completion. Biotech manufacturer Resilience (National Resilience) sold the facility to Oxford in a sale leaseback deal and will continue to occupy the property for up to 30 years.
The property at 92 Crowley Drive will feature dedicated, multimodal manufacturing suites, as well as warehouse and office space. Notably, the high-tech facility is a perfect fit for technology-focused Resilience and will become its flagship location once operational. Resilience has expanded rapidly since its establishment in November 2020 operating multiple multimodal manufacturing facilities across North America. Earlier this month, Resilience signed a 10-year biomanufacturing partnership with an undisclosed “leading pharmaceutical company.”
The latest transaction is the third sale and leaseback between Oxford and Resilience, further cementing their strategic partnership and shared plans for expansion. The deal allows Resilience to focus resources on science and development, while Oxford offers its investment and experience in managing life sciences infrastructure.
In 2017, Oxford began investing in the life sciences industry, developing its portfolio across key North American and European markets. Today, its North American portfolio comprises 1.4 million square feet with an additional 1 million square feet in the pipeline.
What’s more, the purchase of 92 Crowley provides further momentum to Oxford’s strategy to become the market leader in good manufacturing practice (GMP) facility ownership. In North America, Oxford‘s GMP platform and pipeline has expanded to 12 facilities across six markets, with the largest concentration — totaling 775,000 square feet — in the life sciences hub of greater Boston.
Boston’s Life Sciences Suburbanization
Boston maintains its dominance in the life sciences industry with world-class research institutions, available talent and funding. In fact, the region leads the industry with both the largest real estate market and largest labor force employed, which is further evidenced in the area’s 13.2% growth of biopharma employment in 2021.
And, with a life sciences real estate supply-demand imbalance, Boston continues to expand from its historical epicenter of Kendall Square to new and emerging clusters around the state. As a potential example of this trend, all five GMP facilities in the Boston region owned by Oxford are in the suburban spillovers of Farnborough, Medford, Bedford or Marlborough, Mass.
Plus, the wider Boston life sciences market shows no sign of slowing down: The Massachusetts Biotechnology Council reported in 2022 that 1.7 million square feet of GMP space, as well as another 14.86 million square feet of lab space, was under construction.
