Developers announced plans Thursday to build a pair of big laboratory facilities, totaling 800,000 square feet, in Montgomery County, reflecting that municipality’s ongoing efforts to remain a magnet for the life sciences and biohealth industries.
The lab sites are collectively branded EvolutionLabs, with their primary driver being Bethesda-based developer Stonebridge. The smaller of the two projects, but the first to get underway, will comprise two buildings, together weighing in at 250,000 square feet. The first building, six stories and 150,000 square feet, is anticipated to break ground this fall, with tenant construction to follow next winter. The second building, at 100,000 square feet, will break ground in 2024.
This first iteration of EvolutionLabs will sit upon vacant land in Gaithersburg that's adjacent to 9711 Washingtonian Blvd., where an office building is occupied by OpenText, a software company, and a parking garage sits. For this portion of the project, Stonebridge has partnered with Principal Real Estate Investors, the site’s owner and a commercial real estate company that falls under the umbrella of Iowa-based Principal Global Investors, in turn a member of Principal Financial Group (NASDAQ: PFG).
Because a tenant hasn’t been secured yet, the Washingtonian phase of EvolutionLabs won’t be able to take advantage of an expedited zoning approval process the county established last month, Stonebridge Principal Keith Marquis told the Washington Business Journal, adding that the firm hopes to partake of that option with future phases. The county council approved the zoning change in order to incentivize the development of biohealth campuses and further boost its treasured biotech industry.
The larger EvolutionLabs site, which will consist of three buildings totaling 550,000 square feet, will go up in North Bethesda on a present-day parking lot, about a quarter-mile west of the Red Line’s White Flint Metro station, starting in 2024.
Stonebridge has that Bethesda site under contract from LG Georgetown LLC, an affiliate of property management company Gables Residential. Gables had at one time planned residential development on the property but scrapped that project after several years of delays.
Ben Wu, president and CEO of the Montgomery County Economic Development Corp., described EvolutionLabs as part of a larger arc of development necessary to meet the industry’s growing demand for lab space in the county — particularly as the current health crisis places a higher premium on drug and vaccine research and development.
Wu cited his organization’s 2021 Connecting the Dots report, which calls for the county to add 2 million square feet of lab space to its existing stock of roughly 10.6 million square feet. Major providers of lab space currently include Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. (NYSE: ARE), a Pasadena, California, company that counts roughly 3.7 million square feet of existing or developing lab space along Montgomery's I-270 corridor, while Boston Properties (NYSE: BXP) is building its Shady Grove Bio+Tech Campus in place of an aging office campus in Rockville.
“We clearly knew that we needed to add more,” Wu said, adding that EvolutionLabs “will certainly help hit that mark.”
