A firm that first moved its headquarters to Cincinnati from the East Coast in November 2021 is on the move once more. It’s now the newest tenant at one of the largest office buildings downtown.
Orange Grove Bio, a drug investment and development firm, has relocated its HQ to the PNC Center, located on East Fifth Street in the Central Business District. The company hosted an open house Sept. 28 to officially commemorate the new space.
Orange Grove first landed in Cincinnati from New York two years ago, taking up space at University of Cincinnati’s 1819 Innovation Hub.
It now has four times the footprint at PNC Center – Orange Grove occupies 5,000 square feet on the 25th floor of the 27-story Class A office tower.
The move also solidifies its connection and commitment to the city, Orange Grove Bio leaders said. The firm has flown past the incubation phase, said Marc Appel, Orange Grove Bio’s CEO, which is how his team had viewed 1819.
“We’ve grown faster than our initial projections, and we’ve been able to build a lot more partnerships,” Appel told me. “When we started here, UC was a key leader, and being near them was critical. We still work with them very regularly, but this gives us proximity to other partners in the region.”
Orange Grove works with universities, academic hospitals and entrepreneurs to develop new treatments for diseases, focusing largely on cancer and immune disorders.
The firm actively runs its portfolio companies, plugging in core team members to support development efforts and more.
Appel said the firm looked solely downtown for its new HQ. PNC Center offers several amenities, including a golf simulator, and a recently overhauled lobby. That will help attract new team members. He said Orange Grove has had very little turnover in its existence. The firm, founded in 2019, has around 40 full-time employees, with about half its team based in Cincinnati.
Hotel access was also key.
“In the tech and innovation ecosystem, you have to have nice employee perks,” he said. “We want to continue to bring people to the region. We constantly have people coming and out, and being able to walk around the corner is invaluable.”
PNC Center lobby renovation
The company’s initial move to Cincinnati allowed it direct access to the top research and commercialization talent in the region.
Orange Grove typically works with partners outside the Boston and San Francisco ecosystems, considered more traditional biotech hubs. They consider the region an “important emerging hub of biotechnology excellence.”
The city is a centralized location. Orange Grove can more easily access cities like Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Lexington, Columbus and Cleveland – “places that collectively represent billions of dollars in federal funding,” Ryan Fox, Orange Grove Bio’s chief business operations officer, has said.
Orange Grove currently has more than 70 partnerships across the country – including with UC and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and St. Elizabeth, among others – with portfolio companies in various life stages of development.
The firm signed a lease for the PNC Center in June and a buildout ensued. Its former HQ at 1819 has since been subleased.
Orange Grove did not disclose its investment in the move.
