Houston has cracked the top 10 on a new list of the best U.S. markets for life sciences.
Houston ranked No. 10 for life sciences companies in an analysis of 45 U.S. metro areas by CommercialCafe, a commercial real estate software company. The report analyzes regional talent pools and life sciences employment, availability of dedicated life sciences property and office space, and the accessibility of local commercial real estate markets.
The report notes that Houston has been lifted among a wave of emerging life sciences clusters around the country, like Salt Lake City, Detroit and Baltimore. However, the life sciences sector still represents less than 1% of office space in the Houston region at 2.3 million square feet. Life sciences real estate projects currently under development totaled more than 817,000 square feet, which represents the 12th-largest pipeline among the 45 cities analyzed in the report.
CommercialEdge singled out the Texas Medical Center's TMC3 campus as an example of developers working to boost Houston as a competitive hub for life sciences companies and health care research. The 37-acre TMC3 campus is currently under construction south of the main TMC campus.
The 250,000-square-foot TMC3 Collaborative Building topped out this spring and represents the TMC's first multi-institutional research facility in its 76-year history. The building is a joint development by the TMC, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Texas A&M University Health Science Center and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
The entire TMC3 campus is expected to create 22,000 new jobs and provide $4.8 billion in economic impact to the city.
The report also mentioned Levit Green, a 53-acre life sciences complex being developed by Houston-based Hines east of the TMC. In May, Hines topped out the first phase of Levit Green, which consists of a five-story, 294,000-square-foot laboratory and office building.
Houston is the highest-ranking Texas city on the list. Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex ranked No. 16 in CommercialEdge's report and boasts the 15th-most affordable average asking rates for office space. The San Antonio metro area ranked No. 29, and the Austin area came in at No. 37.
Overall, Boston takes the No. 1 spot on CommercialCafe's list, followed by San Francisco, San Diego, New York and Washington, D.C., rounding out the top five.
Meanwhile, another recent report by CBRE Group Inc. (NYSE: CBRE) ranked Houston as the 13th-best U.S. market for life sciences talent. The report analyzed multiple criteria from markets around the U.S., such as life sciences jobs and graduates, the number of doctorate degree holders in life sciences, the sector's concentration in the overall job market and other factors.
But Houston still ranks below well-established life sciences and research markets like Boston; Baltimore/Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Bay Area; and San Diego when it comes to talent, the CBRE report found.
