Blackstone plans to invest £850m in new life science space in Cambridge.
The US investor’s BioMed Realty arm is buying two sites in the university city to create about 800,000 sq ft of lab and office space in the university city.
Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and chief executive of Blackstone, said Cambridge is at the heart of the UK’s life sciences sector with more labs than anywhere else in the country “but as things stand, even Cambridge has no new space available — every single facility is either occupied or under offer”.
The company has bought the 15-acre Cambridge International Technology Park site from Abstract and 27-acre plot from the Welding Institute to expand BioMed’s Granta Park campus.
The two sites could deliver 800,000 sq ft, subject to planning consent, almost doubling BioMed Realty’s current 870,000 sq ft UK portfolio.
The most recent survey data shows that all of the life science space in Cambridge is already under offer.
More than $100bn in venture capital has been raised this year for the life sciences sector globally, according to JLL, compared with $96bn last year and $63bn in 2019.
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