BioMed Realty announced the first tenant of its newly opened laboratory office space, The Labs @ 201 Elliott, located on the second floor of the Omeros Building at Seattle’s downtown waterfront. The San-Diego based life science real estate developer held a grand opening for the new 43,000-square-foot space just last month.
A private start-up biotechnology company, Alpine Immune Sciences, Inc. (AIS), signed a three-year lease last week for a 10,000-square-foot laboratory suite, which has both its own lab and office spaces. Of the five available laboratory suites it is the largest available, occupying approximately 25 percent of the floor’s rentable space.
The guys that are running it have been around for quite a while, they aren’t new to life science startup companies, and we’re really excited about that piece of it
“It’s a really exciting company,” said Mike Ruhl, the vice president and Seattle market lead for BioMed. “The guys that are running it have been around for quite a while, they aren’t new to life science startup companies, and we’re really excited about that piece of it. The management team is just stellar.”
According to a press release that AIS announced in June the start-up received $48 million in financing from New York-based OrbiMed Advisors LLC, in order to develop groundbreaking products that could help save lives. AIS is working to treat those who don’t have a normal immune response, such as those with cancer and other autoimmune diseases.
The move into the new space will begin next week, and may take AIS till the end of the month to complete. “It’s kind of a slow move-in process for them,” Ruhl said. “The space is move-in ready, but they made just a few adjustments and bought some equipment.”
Four other tenants are prospectively looking at the remaining four available suites, ranging from 3,818 to 9,705 square feet in size. Ruhl says that hopefully 50 percent or more of that space will be leased by the end of year. “We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the amount of activity that we’ve been getting, especially in August which is usually a slow month,” Ruhl said. “But it seems like this kind of space has been well received by the market.”
