Prologis is making plans for further development at Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
The San-Francisco headquartered firm, best known for big box industrial sites, is bringing forward the £200m scheme as part of the second phase expansion of the campus, which has outline planning permission for 23 acres of development next to Addenbrooke’s Hospital teaching hospital and research centre.
The remaining undeveloped plot of allocated land has potential for 300,000 sq ft of labs and offices, subject to detailed planning consent. The site sits at the heart of a market in which Savills tracked a record 346,000 sq ft of labs take-up in 2023, up by 61% on the previous record of 212,000 sq ft in 2019.
Active demand in Cambridge stands at around 700,000 sq ft as of the start of 2024, according to Savills, which is advising Prologis on its plans. But Prologis does not expect to rush construction.
Andrew Blevins, Prologis senior vice president of life sciences for the UK, said: “We’re putting in planning consent for the detailed development of two buildings this time, then we’ll pause and look whether the market shows sufficient demand to our buildings. It is an episodic rollout programme so that we don’t get ahead of ourselves. We don’t want to see buildings sat here vacant.”
Family feel
Prologis will submit detailed proposals for two speculative laboratory and office buildings, measuring 100,000 sq ft each, towards the end of this month.
“They would be cousins, not twins,” Blevins said, noting that the buildings, designed by Scott Brownrigg, will follow the theme of the neighbouring developments.
Jason Lebidineuse, director at Scott Brownrigg, added: “It’s been a few years in the making to get this right and make sure that we raise buildings that will have that family feel as we go through the project.”
The new buildings are expected to provide 60% labs, developed to the shell and core specification, with the remaining 40% fitted out as offices. The buildings will be flexible to accommodate either a single occupier or up to 20 tenants. Ground floors, meanwhile, will be dedicated to retail.
Blevins said: “There won’t be designated areas for labs and offices. All of that buildings space will be designed to cater for lab and office use with an option to fit out and adjust the workspaces as required.
“We have total flexibility across our footprint. We are thinking about plug and play space for the next building, with potentially fitting out a floor or two.”
The developer is also looking to push up ESG credentials on the scheme, with the aim to achieve BREAAM Outstanding certification. Prologis said that 15% of energy coming into its buildings on the campus is from green sources.
The number of car park spaces on site will be reduced due to improved public transport infrastructure. A new railway station, Cambridge South, will open on the campus next year, and is set to boost connections between life sciences clusters within the Golden Triangle.
“That’s the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake,” Blevins said.
Bespoke buildings
If approved, construction will start on site in October this year with completion of the first building expected in 15 months.
Blevins said: “Our balance sheet is robust enough to undertake this development directly and that is the intention.”
The new buildings will sit next to the speculatively delivered £65m 1000 Discovery Drive and Abcam’s £25m bespoke hub (both pictured above), providing a combined 200,000 sq ft of lab and office space.
The former has been partly pre-let to Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which has signed a 15-year lease on a 23,000 sq ft floorplate to be used for diagnostic pathology services, supporting clinical trials and biotechnological research into diseases.
BioNTech is in talks to occupy the remainder of 1000 Discovery Drive.
Elsewhere in the building, Prologis is looking to bring in a coffee shop operator on the ground floor and open up the space to the local community as well as introduce an “informal” co-working offering, featuring breakout spaces and a meeting room.
Blevins said: “Traditionally the sector has been dominated by large bespoke buildings. We are now entering a new era as the sector matures and expands in the UK. We can see this flexible and fungible space building into known demand and expect demand growth in the sector. Hence, the arrival of speculative development to match that.”
Future phases
Prologis got involved in phase two of Cambridge Biomedical Campus in 2020 following the $13bn (£10.25bn) acquisition of Liberty Property Trust.
Alongside its London-listed development partner Countryside Properties, Liberty was delivering the first two expansion phases of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
Cushman & Wakefield is currently working with South Cambridgeshire District Council to guide the third phase of expansion, which could see up to 20 acres of land brought to the market, and deliver 1m sq ft of life sciences space.
Phase four is expected to cover around 40 acres currently in the greenbelt but with potential to be earmarked for development in Cambridge City Council’s next local plan revision in 2025.
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